


Kisses Cursed

by The_Fictionist



Series: Kisses Cursed [2]
Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Beauty and the Beast, Fairy Tale Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:26:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 49,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fictionist/pseuds/The_Fictionist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fairytale AU. Loosely inspired by Beauty and the Beast. </p><p>Some said he was once a man, cursed, and some that he sold his soul to demons and became one in turn. Others said that such evil as he could never have been human. That he was instead a nightmare, left lingering upon the earth a very long time ago.<br/>Harry just knew it wasn't safe to walk near the Riddle House after dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The House on the Hill

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Tiếng Việt available: [Kisses Cursed - Vietnamese version](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1718018) by [lazysheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazysheep/pseuds/lazysheep)
  * Translation into Español available: [Kisses Cursed (Traducción)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5579839) by [Sthefy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sthefy/pseuds/Sthefy)



                                                                             

 

                                                                                

 

With a name like Little Hangleton, it wasn't surprising that there would be a shadow over the town.

After all, it is the hallmark of all gothic stories: the looming manor upon a hill, surrounded by a graveyard. Yet, it remained that no one went near the Riddle House. And those who did stray into its wild and overgrown garden, never returned past the gates again.

At least, not whole.

Sometimes a finger returned, sometimes an eye, and sometimes all limbs walked home intact with nothing left inside.

Never a heart left. They said that the monster took it to replace the empty space in his chest. Others said he ate them.

Everybody knew the stories. And everybody knew about the offerings.

Each year, there was an offering. Something to appease the monster lurking behind the walls.

All gods must have the proper sacrifices, after all – and so must the devil.

They never said his name. To do so was to invite him to visit you in the night, with creeping tendrils and gleaming scarlet eyes.

_You-Know-Who._  
_The Dark Lord._  
_The Beast._

Some said he was once a man, cursed, and some that he sold his soul to demons and became one in turn. Others said that such evil as he could never have been human. That he was instead a nightmare, left lingering upon the earth a very long time ago.

Harry stuck his trembling hands in his pockets and swallowed. His breath trailed thin ribbons in the air like dragon's smoke. It was always cold upon the hill. No warmth, and never any sunshine. The sky was always black, as if someone had cast cardboard over the sun to leave only perpetual night.

Colder and colder, the closer one got. Darker, like thick smoke and shadow caressed you.

And every year an offering, despite this. Even if they had to be thrown crying and screaming through the gates.

This year, it was supposed to be Ginny. The eighteen-year-old was a year younger than himself.

A year younger, with a family already crippled by losses.

Harry couldn't stand it.

He, however, had no one. No one who would particularly care if he stayed or died.

He didn't know what, exactly, waited for him in the Riddle House – but he was not a sacrifice.

He was a volunteer.

He entered.

It seemed even darker the second he stepped into the garden. His eyes widened in shock as vines and the roots of trees appeared to twist and move around him. He felt them brush curiously against the sides of his clothes, the back of his neck.

The grounds stretched untamed as far as he could see, all the way down the other side of the hill to the fence. Yet the instant one stepped past the gates again, the grass was clean-cut and normal. And the grounds certainly didn't move, he knew. He'd been around there before.

But the garden didn't try and stop him from approaching the house. He just felt very … watched. As if every inch of the garden and the manor was staring at him, trying to see straight into his soul. Assessing him.

He exhaled a shaky breath. The door opened for him before he could even touch it, just like the gate. He stayed frozen for a second, his meagre – optimistic – bag of belongings clutched tightly in his hands.

Sometimes the offerings didn't come back for weeks. Maybe he'd have some use for his clothes? He'd _find_ a use for them.

He could feel his heartbeat hammering in his chest.

He stepped inside. He'd been expecting a complete mess, but the house was immaculately tidy. Though it was dark, from what he could see the house had an old, casual sort of grandeur to it that took Harry's breath away.

He swallowed once more, but the lump stayed stuck in his throat.

Something about the house left an uneasy prickling in his spine, nonetheless.

"Hello?" he called out. "Hello, is anyone there?"

It was morning, but in here it didn't feel like it was. Only the palest shafts of sunlight managed to find their way to the floor.

There was no response, and seemingly nobody there to greet him.

Had the beast died in the last year? Harry didn't think so. He could still sense someone – or something – watching him intently.

Harry spun around, eyes wide, as the door slammed shut behind him. He squared his shoulders, before turning again. Squeezed his eyes shut, exhaled. He could do this.

The Beast was _just a man_. He had to be, surely?

He stepped further into the house, his bag clutched in front of him like a shield. His eyes darted over every corner, every flicker. And there were a _lot_ of flickers, almost as if the very house was moving around him.

"You're the offering."

The house went completely still.

Harry whipped around at the cold breath against his neck. Or he would have, if a hand hadn't clamped tightly on his hip, and another on the back of his neck, keeping him staring rigidly ahead. The fingers were freezing against his skin.

"Don't turn around." The words were hissed against his ear, lips grazing the shell.

"Harry. My name is Harry," he managed. "Not 'the offering'."

_"Harry."_ His name was rolled on the monster's tongue, a low croon.

He'd never wanted to turn around more. He wanted to see what he was dealing with, if the beast really had eyes like blood and hellfire – if he was substance and flesh that could be fought, or something far more insidious. His eyes darted down to glimpse pale, spidery fingers hiding deceptive strength.

He swallowed. His shoulders stiffened as he felt the monster press close, inhaling deeply against his neck. His skin had gone numb where the other's hands restrained him.

"Are you … Voldemort?" His voice stayed more or less even, mercifully. He couldn't help but think that even the slightest weakness would get him torn to pieces. It was too late to fear summoning the creature now.

"You dare speak my name?" The voice was cold.

At least that answered his question.

"Sorry. What would you like me to call you?" As much he half-wanted to say something sarcastic, he figured that politeness would only help him here.

There was a small stretch of silence, before the hand on his hip moved up, to dig nails in over his pounding chest. Harry's breath stuttered.

"You have a strong heart, Harry Potter. Delectable."

Harry jerked a little with unease, though he still couldn't turn his head. The nails kept pressing in, and a small sound of pain escaped him.

"If you're going to kill me, you may as well let me look at you before you do," Harry snapped. "Face my executioner."

The monster laughed at that, grip loosening. It wasn't a nice laugh. It wasn't warm or mirthful, it was as frozen as the man's touch and equally unforgiving.

"There are four rules," Voldemort stated instead. "One, don't try and escape. Two, dinner is every day at six, sharp. I expect you to look your best, or suffer the consequences." The hand on the back of his neck gave a small squeeze. "Three, don't ever enter my quarters on the left side of the house. And … most importantly of all –" the Dark Lord's mouth was by his other ear now – "don't leave your room between sunset and sunrise. No matter what you hear, or for any other reason. Is that understood?"

"... yes."

"We'll talk again if you last the night in my home."

Then he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: You know me, helpless to resist a plot bunny once it latches on. Don't worry, this won't be too long. 13 chapters max, and probably less than that. Hope you enjoy it anyway and that your interest is piqued :) Feedback, as always, is much appreciated.
> 
> Beta'd by the wonderful Lydia Theda. Thank her for the quality increase! :)
> 
> The Gorgeous cover is by lordmarvoloriddle - http://lordmarvoloriddle.tumblr.com/ - for the tomarrychallenge. Thank you so much!


	2. The Riddle and the Nameless

Harry spent the time before dinner exploring his new surroundings.

Voldemort had given him no indication as to which room was supposed to be his – and there were a lot of empty rooms, all of them clearly in disuse.

He was starting to assume that he should just pick one and call it his own, since he'd be staying here for the not inconsiderable future. Or maybe it wasn’t considerable. Maybe it could be measured out in a couple of hours, and the rise and fall of the sun.

Maybe by the morning he'd be blood seeping in the hallways, and a collection of limbs sent back to the village in a gift box. Returned. Didn't fit right. He shuddered at the thought.

But he didn't run.

Shadows over a small village ought to be easy to run away from, like rain clouds or wolves in the night. Driven back and fought.

But the village was cursed too. The manor, and its monster, was merely the central point.

Maybe that was why they kept giving offerings – hope and hopelessness. The hopelessness of not being able to stand up to such a creature, when all who did, died, and all who ran were killed the second they crossed the boundary lines.

Every old manor had a certain amount of territory allotted to it, after all.

And though they saw the sun in the village, they hadn't had a summer in all of their memory. Not a proper summer, anyway. Winter crunched for half a year beneath their feet, frozen and swallowing up what days and light they did have. Autumn and spring came too, but always bleak, always grey and rainy.

But not as dark as the hill – nothing could beat the living shadows devouring the Riddle House.

Then there was always hope – the hope that, if this was a curse and not just the condemning tyranny of a monster, that it could be relieved.

There were always stories of such things. Of saviours and heroes, pretty knights and maidens in shining armour, of true love and pure hearts.

Harry couldn't help but notice that all the mirrors in the manor were broken, the shards of glass dusty and never cleaned away, even when everything else in the house was spotless. The sheets on all the beds were fresh and ironed. And the house really did _move_. He saw it as he switched lights on – doors opening without a breeze, staircases shifting. The paintings, however, had all been slashed where the Lord of the Manor should have stood. Deep, violent gashes that left strips of peeling faces on the floor.

Harry eventually chose a room at the far right of the building. It seemed to be in the best condition, and … well, he was just drawn to it, he supposed.

It was the only room in the manor that wasn't in some way destroyed, and he studied it curiously. There was a large four-poster bed, a magnificent writing desk, and various other comforts.

And then there was the painting.

Harry stared at it, stepping up to read the inscription.

'Tom Riddle, Jr.'

It was the only painting Harry had seen in the house that hadn't been destroyed. It depicted a handsome young man, standing in a full portrait. He had dark hair, skin like ivory, and a knowing look in his eyes.

Harry's head tilted.

He wondered why this picture, of all the landscapes and family portraits in the building, would be spared. It didn't look like anything special.

He felt like it was staring at him.

He wasn't surprised. This whole house was bloody creepy. He gave a slight shudder and turned away.

Oddly … well, he wasn't actually sure what to do with himself.

He'd been prepared, however subconsciously, for a fight to the death.

Whilst Voldemort had undoubtedly been unnerving, he hadn't done anything overtly life-threatening. Just dug his nails in a bit.

It made him wonder exactly how the bodies accumulated.

He spun on his heel, examining the room again. His skin itched, palms tingling. In the end, he tossed his belongings upon the sheets, and stared at them.

It was funny to think that this was what was to become of him. A small assortment of belongings in a threadbare bag – a toothbrush, a few scarce changes of clothes, a knife, and a photo album – would be the sum total of his existence.

Nothing special. Nothing momentous.

Just a collection of stuff.

But he supposed that was why he was here – ordinary stuff. Not much to leave behind, and even less to take forward. Maybe everyone was just stuff in the end. Stuff and dust.

He didn't even have anything appropriate for dinner. Did that mean he was going to become dinner? And what exactly happened between sunset and sunrise?

He strode across the room, over to the window.

At least it wasn't barred, though it did take a few good shoves to force open. He drew in a breath, looking for something fresh and sharp against the stale heaviness in the room.

There was nothing. It wasn't smoke, but the sky was so dark that it felt like it might as well have been. Like he could catch it in his hand.

He shivered at the ice that seemed to seep in, and after a moment, shut the window again with a sigh. Even if he wanted to escape this way, cloaked in night, it looked like a pretty brutal drop.

He dragged a hand over his face. Escape was pointless, anyway – however much his bones thrummed for it.

Then he froze. Had … had the portrait moved? His mouth ran completely dry.

Of course, in a so far magical manor house, a moving painting was not the strangest of things.

But it made the back of his neck prickle, regardless.

Harry could have sworn its head had moved to track his progress across the room.

Maybe he was just being an idiot.

"… hello?" His voice was a little raspy.

"You're the offering."

Harry immediately had a flash of déjà vu. And nearly jumped out of his skin all over again. Moving and speaking portraits seemed very different things, even if the distinction seemed ridiculous. It was, after all, logical that it could speak, if it could move.

It still sent another shudder down his spine. Not that there was anything wrong with the voice. It was a nice, pleasing baritone.

"Yeah. I'm Harry," he said. He glanced at the inscription. "You're … Tom, right?"

"Correct. I am the Riddle."

Harry's brow furrowed at the strange phrasing.

"The Riddle?" he repeated. The painting just gave him a sly sort of smile in response.

"You should leave, you know," Riddle said. "When it gets dark."

"Voldemort said not to go out between sunset and sunrise."

"He would."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry asked.

"Beast by day, monster by night. Beware the war when shadow meets light," it all but sang. He really wasn't reassured by the way Tom was grinning at him sharply. And the … well, the almost-riddle didn't answer anything either.

Harry swallowed.

"If there's a monster at night, obviously it's not a very good idea to go for a walk," he replied.

"So you will dine with the beast then," Riddle murmured. "Interesting choice."

Harry's eyes narrowed.

"You act like this is all some sort of game," he noted. The painting raised its brows, head tilting as it examined him.

"Isn't it?"

Harry's mouth soured at that response, and he turned away. Wondered what he should be doing with himself now, in the hours before dinner. Besides talking to an infuriating painting.

Who was Tom Riddle, anyway? The former tenant before Voldemort? Or someone else entirely?

This was going to be interesting – if he survived the night.

* * *

There was nobody else at dinner. The house guided him to the dining hall at six o’clock, promptly.

There was quite a spread across the long table. Everything he could possibly hope to eat, really.

His stomach gave a growl of hunger. He'd been too nervous for a substantial breakfast that morning, and hadn't eaten since.

There were sweetbreads and potatoes. A whole roasted duck. A fresh salad, a bowl of various fruits. Peas. Sweetcorn. Carrots. Broccoli.

It all smelled divine.

He wondered who had cooked it. He'd found a kitchen in his exploration, but no people, outside of Voldemort. He wondered if the man intended to poison him, and poked suspiciously at the gorgeous food.

Well, he was going to die anyway if he starved himself, wasn't he? In a situation such as his, a hunger strike really did no good. He had nothing to lose in having dinner.

It tasted just as good as it looked, and he gave a small sound of contentment.

At least he could die in the lap of luxury, if that counted for anything.

Still, he wondered where Voldemort was, if it was apparently so important that he turn up for dinner. Then again, the man had said he'd see him tomorrow if he survived the night. Maybe he was about to be dinner once he was paralyzed by poison in the food. Or dead. Or something.

Was it really just him and Voldemort in this manor?

Even if he survived, that seemed a lonely life.

As he continued to eat his fill, he lost his appetite with every bite. The duck was delicious, so was everything – but he barely got through the plate before he was shoving it away.

He had no idea what he was supposed to do now. Start taking plates to the kitchen and clean up? He stood up, glancing at the windows overlooking the garden.

It was difficult to tell, but the sun was already setting in the sky. Dipping lower and lower, and taking the rays of light with it.

_Don't leave your room between sunset and sunrise._

Was his room safe then? He hadn't seen any massive locks on it. Nothing that would keep a monster out.

He'd never liked the word 'monster', any more than he liked 'beast'.

Call a man Voldemort, and at least he could make a guess at what he was dealing with. Nameless things were far too vague, and monsters came in many forms. His muscles tensed a little.

Definitely time to go back, before the sun set completely.

* * *

He made it in good time, not intending to be stupid enough to linger. Not on the first night.

Though his bones felt heavy all of a sudden, leaden. Maybe he really was poisoned. But it was just heaviness, like weight on his shoulders and ball-and-chain shackles on his feet.

By the time he reached 'his' room, he was sweating slightly. He glanced at the portrait, and Riddle gave him a thin smile.

"Did you enjoy dinner?"

"… yes, thanks," Harry said. Honestly, that portrait was just a bit weird. Polite enough, but very strange.

The smile broadened.

"Seeds and deeds, Harry. I have another one for you – what do you call the nameless?" It was that same mocking, sing-song tone. It made Harry's skin crawl, if he was being honest.

"I don't know," he muttered. "What _do_ you call the nameless? Surely you can call them whatever you want, if they don't have a name." He was far more concerned with the darkening room, the sinking sun. In a minute, at the most.

He moved over to the window. Could feel the anticipation sinking into his skin.

And then everything outside was black. Absolutely everything. Like black smog and liquid shadows. His own room, despite the lights being on to full capacity, had turned dimly lit too.

It made everything eerier, distorting familiar shapes to something different.

He supposed, if it was dark by day, it would be even darker at night. Here, in the centre of things. He inhaled shakily. Suddenly, in comparison to stumbling alone in the blackness, talking to Tom seemed a far more appealing option.

"Are you going to answer, then, Tom? What do you call the nameless?"

He turned again, and froze.

The portrait was empty. There was nothing there. Just – that wasn't Tom.

Just as quickly as the canvas was black, there was a new form there.

Harry swallowed. Squared his shoulders.

This one looked very different. Terrifying. Eyes like hellfire, skin as pale as ivory. Long, spidery fingers that he recognized from his hip. Hairless, noseless.

"Tom?" he asked, very quietly. The inscription was still the same – Tom Riddle, Jr. And yet … well, this creature looked absolutely nothing like the handsome young man who'd been leaning against the frame earlier.

He took a wary step closer.

"Harry!" It was a call, from outside the room. Ginny's voice. "Harry, help me!"

His eyes widened, and he immediately started making his way to the door but –

_Don't leave your room between sunset and sunrise, no matter what you hear._

He felt sick. His eyes darted between the door and the painting. The man, the creature, was watching him with those mirthless, bloody eyes. He quivered on the spot, torn. His heart hammered in his chest.

He wrenched his gaze away, to the door and the screams, and back again to the painting.

It shook its head.

Why had the painting changed? What the hell was going on here?

"I don't understand," Harry said. "Where's Riddle? Who are you?"

"Don't."

Harry recognized the voice immediately. He'd heard it once today already. It was V–

"Don't," it repeated firmly.

He wondered if he would ever get used to the feeling of déjà vu. His eyes raked over the other's features closely.

Whilst he didn't look pleasant, and those eyes were terrifying, he really wasn't what one would expect from a beast. Harry's fingers clenched to fists at his sides, his brow furrowing with confusion.

The cries started again. High-pitched screams, wails for help. Everyone he'd ever loved, crying out in the darkness. Harry took an immediate step towards the door again, distracted, shaking.

"Don't." It sounded lazier this time. The warning was there nonetheless.

"What's out there?" Harry's voice cracked, just slightly. "What the hell is going on?"

"The Riddle already told you."

Harry stared, uncomprehending. An … actual riddle? He thought back to Tom, eyes locked on the painting uneasily.

"… beast by day. Monster by night. Beware the war when shadow meets light," he whispered. "Are you …?" The screams sounded again. Harry squeezed his eyes shut, bile in his throat.

Monster by night.

"He'll be coming for you. He'll always be coming."

"V–" he began.

"Idiot," the painting all but hissed. _"Don't."_

Harry swallowed. Every time he came close to addressing, or thinking…

"Why am I not allowed to address you?" he phrased carefully.

_What do you call the nameless?_

"Seek not to name the nameless. There is a library here. You should read up on the rules. The ones who did got the furthest."

"Got the furthest?" Harry questioned. It said nothing, just stared at him. Harry’s fists clenched.

"Okay. Thanks, then. You’ve been really helpful."

"He's boring. You should come and spend time with me, offering."

It was another voice, and Harry yelped, spinning to face the door.

And then … then he just stared, mouth dry.

"How the hell many of you are there!?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **[Nameless](http://rdemon90.deviantart.com/art/Kisses-Cursed-438619593)** by rdemon90


	3. The First Night

It looked like the Riddle.

Almost.

Same handsomeness, same form – it was as if the painting had sprung to life. Except … not quite right.

Instead of the gorgeous, albeit cold, blue eyes that Harry had seen in the painting, these were like obsidian ink. Then, in sharp contrast to the bloodlessly pale skin that had been creamy and healthy in the painting, the Monster's veins dipped to the same darkness as his gaze. Coupled with his dark clothing, he looked like an old black and white photograph. Something sucked dry. Only his lips, vibrant and bloody, had colour.

It smiled. "There are six of us," it answered, leaning against the door but not stepping in. "You've met the Beast, the Riddle, and You-Know-Who here." Unlike Voldemort's voice – high and cold – the man before him had Riddle's voice, pleasing in its baritone.

"And you're the Monster," Harry clarified.

"Quite," it murmured. 

Okay. So the bastard looked rather creepy, Harry could admit that, but he didn't see how he was a monster. At least, he didn't see how this incarnation was any worse than the others in this house. The Nameless, or 'You-Know-Who' as the Monster referred to him, was actually more frightening simply from a visual comparison.

And if the Monster looked like a distorted version of the Riddle, he was guessing that the Beast in some way held resemblance to the Nameless too.

He glanced at the current painting again. You-Know-Who's expression was blank as he watched the two of them closely, though his attention seemed focused more on the Monster. Harry exhaled a sharp breath.

"Why do they call you a monster?" he asked quietly. The Monster shrugged.

"Why do they call you the offering?" it returned.

"By all means, feel free to answer that one too," Harry snapped. "I've been here less than 24 hours; I have no idea what's going on."

The screams, at least, had stopped.

"Must be frustrating," the Monster said. "Why don't you just run?" It took a step back, away from the door, as if to clear the path. Harry's insides rolled.

Maybe he was being biased and judging, but he wasn't going to trust anything called a 'monster' quite that easily. Still.

"The Riddle said I should leave when it gets dark, as well," he remembered, noting the words. Trying to figure this out.

"He would," the Nameless stated. Harry glanced over at the painting again, a shudder running down his spine. He was certain he'd heard that exact phrasing earlier today. Except that time, it had been the Riddle's response to Voldemort telling him he shouldn't leave.

It was a combination of unhelpful contradictions, and made it impossible to decide which one of them he was supposed to trust. Maybe he couldn't trust any of them, and wasn't that a cheerful thought?

But either way, he couldn't run. He'd volunteered for this. Admittedly, he hadn't expected _this_ precisely, but nevertheless he wouldn't run now.

He looked between the two of them cautiously, a bad taste in his mouth. His limbs still felt uncommonly heavy – had done since dinner.

"Why's he called a monster?" he asked the painting instead.

"Because that's what he is," You-Know-Who replied.

"What's he done that's so bad?" Harry persisted, looking for an explanation rather than some tautological nonsense.

The Nameless said nothing in response, mouth turned down thin.

"What have you done?" Harry asked the Monster instead, frustrated by the lack of proper answers. It had answered him before, so maybe it would do so again.

"Come out and I'll show you," it said, giving him a singularly lovely, close-lipped smile. Harry's eyes narrowed, and he folded his arms.

It still hadn't stepped into his room, and considering Voldemort had told him not to leave it … he could only guess that the Monster couldn't enter. He wondered if the same held true for the Beast.

"Does that line normally work for you?"

It shrugged at him, smile only broadening. Harry shook his head, turning away. This day had been one development after another, and he was exhausted. He sighed, tugging a hand through his hair, and stared towards the window. Not that there was much of a view, with the building encased in shadowy night.

The screaming sounded again, shrill and sharp. Harry swore under his breath, whipping around again. The Monster continued to stand there, looking like he wasn't planning on moving anytime soon. Its eyes were less friendly now, as if it knew Harry's thoughts, and his dismissal. Knew that it made Harry's skin crawl. Harry wondered if he should just march over and shut the door in his face. Probably.

The screaming had stopped once more.

"Are you doing that?" Harry asked, in regards to the … screaming. He didn't know how the other could possibly be doing it, but … 

The Monster opened its mouth properly for the first time, under Harry's scrutiny. Its lips stretched wide and cavernous, revealing teeth sharper than any he'd ever seen. Even those of the wolves that hunted in the forest. They were startlingly white, and between them rested a black, snake-like tongue. The screaming hit him a moment later – the voices spewing out of the Monster's mouth, as if they were trapped in his throat.

Please, Harry, help me! Stop him! Please, just make it stop, I'll do anything –

Harry blanched. He stared, wide-eyed, unable to look away from the sight. After a moment, the Monster's teeth clicked shut once more. Back to a pleasant smile, and silence with it.

Oh god. Harry swallowed.

He glanced at the painting once more, even if he suspected no reassurance or explanation would be found.

The Nameless raised a delicate brow at him, picking at its nails.

Worst of all, Harry had an uneasy feeling in his gut that hearing his loved ones crying out when the Monster screamed was only the beginning. His fists clenched at his sides.

He was starting to get the awful suspicion that this was going to be a nightly ritual. He could shut the door, but that wouldn't stop him from hearing, would it? How the hell was he supposed to sleep with all of this? He never asked for this! Well, he volunteered, but he hadn't expected it to go like this.

He'd expected to be hunted, ripped to pieces and eaten on the spot – not thrown into this 'game' where he had to willingly choose to step out and die. He'd already volunteered for death once. It wasn't so easy to do so again, when he'd done his part on the matter already.

"What do you want?"

"You," the Monster said simply. "I want my offering. And I won't stop until I have it."

"It?" Harry repeated incredulously. "I'm not a bloody it. Person. Human. Is this registering to any of you?" He looked between both of them, eyes flashing. "From the minute I arrived, you've all been acting like this is some kind of game."

"It is a game," the Nameless stated. "More or less."

Harry's jaw tightened at that. Of course, the Riddle had said something similar, but the fact that they all obviously treated this – his life – as some kind of amusement…

Bile clawed up his throat.

"You make me sick." His voice cracked.

"So run," the Monster all but sang. "It's not like you chose to be here."

"Actually, I did," Harry snapped. They both froze.

"You … volunteered?" Nameless repeated.

"You act like that's never happened before," Harry said. For creatures so different in countenance, they had exactly the same expression now as they stared at him. Harry blinked. "It has happened before, right? Parents for children? Siblings for siblings?"

It didn't make sense that he would be the only one.

"He actually is the Offering," the Nameless murmured, breathless.

"That's what you've been calling me the whole time?" Harry raised his brows. It was hardly a new development, after all, though it didn't make any sense to him.

"Does the Beast know?" the Monster asked the painting. "The others?"

The others. He'd met four out of six. For a moment, he wondered what the hell they called themselves. He wondered, too, if there was a nice one among them. The Heart would be a nice one to meet, all things considered.

"Know what?" Harry snapped. "What do you mean? What are you talking about? Why is my volunteering such a big deal?"

He wasn't sure if this was frightening, or just confusing. He was veering towards confusion, considering the safety of the room would leave terror pointless. The Monster was intimidating, but if it really couldn't get at him so long as he didn't leave the room … he had nothing to be scared of.

Meeting it outside of the room, in the middle of the night, would be a different matter entirely. One he sincerely intended to avoid. 

When the Monster continued to simply study him, he looked to the Nameless again for explanation.

"He can't tell you anything," the Monster stated then. "I can. The Riddle will. The Beast and the Nameless can't. It's against the rules."

"You can but the Riddle will? And you keep going on about rules?"

"The Monster is a monster – outside of stepping into this room, it can do whatever it wants. It is an abomination," the Nameless said tightly. "That doesn't mean it will. The Riddle is compelled to answer any questions that you put towards him, regarding the house and your … situation."

But, of course, as the name suggested, that didn't mean the bastard answered straight. He answered in his namesake, even if the information was probably correct. Bloody fantastic.

"And the Beast?" Harry pressed. "Why can't he do the same as the Monster? And don't say it's because he's not the Monster."

The Nameless' jaw clicked shut again from where he'd been about to speak.

"It goes against the rules for the Beast to do so," the Monster said, shrugging. "He can't."

"Why don't you just break the rules? What's stopping you?" He was definitely getting a headache. Just being killed would have been so much easier.

"Nobody breaks the rules," the Nameless said.

"Why not?" Harry persisted. No answer came. "Beast, Riddle, Nameless, Monster. What about the other two? What can they do? Who are they? Am I going to meet them on a bloody full moon or something?"

He didn't know why he looked at You-Know-Who when the painting simply continued to pick at its nails, watching him but not replying. Harry figured he probably couldn't.

He wondered what the point of the bastard was. He assumed, if this was a game, that he would have a point to being there. Though really, what was the point of a nameless thing?

He looked at the Monster again.

"Let me guess, you don't fancy answering any of these various queries?" Harry huffed, jaw clenched.

"Why do something for free, when I can do it for a price?" the Monster purred.

"And what's the price?"

"Don't," Nameless warned. Harry ignored him this time.

"Oh, that depends on what you want to know," the Monster said. "It could be your first smile, perhaps the scent of your childhood home, or the sound of your voice."

Harry's mouth had gone dry. What the hell type of pricing list was that supposed to be? He looked at the Nameless.

"You mentioned a library. Can I find my answers there?" he asked.

"Some of them, and the rules," the painting replied. "You can also ask the Riddle, free of charge, providing you can solve what he's actually saying."

But if he wanted immediate and unlimited knowledge, he needed to deal with the Monster.

At least, that was what he assumed hovered unsaid on the Nameless' countenance.

"No deal then," Harry said to the Monster. It bared its teeth at him in response.

"You're going to have to pick a side sometime, offering."

"My name's H–"

"Don't."

Harry looked at the painting once more – the initial sharpness of its first reprimand was back, the urgency for silence.

"You really do have a thing about names, don't you?" Harry returned.

"Names have power," the painting replied. "You should be careful what you name, and who you give your name to."

Harry’s brow furrowed.

If names had power, what power did 'offering' have? Because they certainly seemed to have something about that one, and his volunteering.

"It already knows my name." The screams had addressed him directly, after all.

"Knowledge is not the same as giving something. He cannot use your name freely," the painting said.

Right. Had he mentioned that dying would have been the easiest option?

He would have asked, too, what the other meant by ‘picking a side’ – but he had a feeling that unless he wanted to exchange something, he wouldn't be getting a helpful response.

Still, how much did he really need his first smile, anyway?

It seemed stupid to do anything hasty before he'd looked at the library, though. For now, he was stuck, stuck until daybreak.

He had a feeling that it was going to be a very long night.

* * *

The next morning dawned with bleary eyes and exhaustion.

Harry hadn't got a wink of sleep. The Monster had stayed outside of his door all night, screaming those voices at him when it couldn't get in, and he wouldn't come out.

It was only when the first thin shaft of sunlight hit the door from the window, that it disappeared. Fuzzed like a bad connection, and vanished from sight.

The painting went black; and the Riddle was back, eyeing him with the same terrible look of amusement that they all had. Harry squared his shoulders.

"The rules. What are they?" he demanded immediately.

"Good morning, Harry," Riddle replied, settling comfortably against the frame. "I see you survived your first night."

"You have to answer my questions," Harry said. Tom grimaced in response to that.

"I presume you mean the rules of the house?"

"What else would I mean?" Harry felt wariness coil in his gut.

"Rules of the house," Riddle said. This time, his voice was flat, expression blank. "One – if you eat something, you cannot leave again. Two – respect the paintings and the house. Three – seek not to name the nameless. Four – if you are granted the right to leave, don't look back. Five – coming or going, there is a price to pay. Same goes for the moves of the game."

Harry blanched. Well, at least it wasn't a riddle? He supposed the painting had to offer the rules, if asked. Even if Riddle had freedom to, well, riddle on other matters. But … well, he'd eaten, hadn't he?

"You could have told me this before I went down for dinner," he hissed, fists clenching. Riddle smirked at him.

"You didn't ask. You chose to dine with the Beast."

Harry spluttered at that response. He didn't ask? How was he even supposed to know to ask in the first place?

"And … the offering? What does that mean?"

"The offering. The sacrifice. It is given to the house and its inhabitants, by the village, to keep Voldemort from entering the town." Riddle was looking at him as if he was stupid for needing to ask. Harry's teeth gritted.

"Does it make a difference that I volunteered? I'm not a sacrifice, I chose this."

Riddle's expression changed, just as the others' had.

"Then that is beyond my jurisdiction," the painting said evenly. "You would need to ask somebody else."

"Who? The Monster?" Harry laughed bitterly. "What's the point of you then? What does ‘beyond your jurisdiction’ even mean?"

"If that is the path you choose –" Riddle eyed him for a moment. "Go and have breakfast. The Beast is waiting for you. And eating no longer matters. Be careful."

"I met the Monster and you're telling me to be careful now?"

Riddle merely gave him a smile in response.

Harry sighed.

He supposed surviving the first night counted for something, at least.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope that wasn't anticlimactic. But yes, action should be more or less picking up from now on. :) Thank you for your reviews, they are greatly appreciated. Hope this chapter was at least marginally less bewildering.
> 
>   
>  **[The Monster](http://paper-ramblings.tumblr.com/post/100614958804/the-monster-by-origamimoon32)** by Origami Moon


	4. The Monster in the Dark

_Beast. Riddle. Nameless. Monster. Past. Prophecy._

_One would assume that six pieces would make up the whole, and yet something seems to be missing still. It seems, from my investigations, that six parts make up the puzzle to be solved, instead of joining together to make the solution. I have determined that an offering must confront each piece in full to adequately break the curse. Or to have even a chance at surviving the house._

_It is to the advantage of the offerings that the curse itself wants to be broken. However, to the detriment of winning this awful 'game', not all pieces want to be slotted together. Do not trust them, and be very careful of the names that you give to them._

_Whilst the moves of the game are unlimited within the house, there is a price for each one taken and so you should be wary about where you step. I don't know if this is much help to you, though I hope it is, but in my time here I have jotted down those moves that I could identify, however vaguely. Along with anything else I think will help. I know I cannot defeat this myself, but I can only hope that this information will help somebody else end the shadow haunting our town, before more people are hurt._

_The Beast will block the left side of the house, and his quarters. Do not attempt to approach them by day. It is a death sentence. He will kill you. The Beast seems to act as an enforcer of the rules, whereas the Monster will act as a chaotic agent to the game. A wild card._

_However, as you will unfortunately be able to guess, that means –_

* * *

Harry was halfway through breakfast when a hand caught his chin from behind.

He immediately froze, having not even heard footsteps coming up behind him. He could guess who it was easily enough though, even if spidery fingers hadn't appeared on his hip yet.

He exhaled a careful breath. Swallowed.

"Are you intending to kill me now?" His voice remained steady. His eyes flicked to the side, to try and get a better look, but the Beast was out of his line of sight.

"You survived the night, then."

"Beast by day, Monster by night. Interesting life you lead," Harry muttered, eyes dark and jaw tight. He didn't know Voldemort's part in this curse; whether he caused it, or if he was as cursed as any of the rest of them … but there was a very long trail of bodies coming from this house either way. "I take it I'm still not allowed to look at you?"

"We'll see." Lips grazed down, pressing against his neck, tipping his head back slightly. Harry did his best to sustain his calm. Though, considering some of the victims had their throats ripped out, that was rather difficult and his pulse automatically picked up.

He clenched his fingers around his cutlery as he tried to order his thoughts. He resisted the urge to pull away, though really, the Beast's grip was steely and he wasn't sure he'd be able to even if he tried.

"Are you intending to kill me now?" he asked again. He discreetly flicked the battered notebook in front of him shut. He'd got it out of the library on his way to breakfast, because honestly he didn't much want to waste time.

The longer he went without information, the less likely he was to survive.

The notebook seemed to have been left by one of the other offerings – a girl called Hermione Granger.

"Not today," was the Beast's response. "I liked her. She was one of the better ones. She would have tasted delicious too. Rich with ideas. She had a strong heart."

Harry's eyes darted over the notebook that obviously hadn't slipped past the Beast's notice, and he nearly shuddered.

"What happened to her?"

"The Monster got her," the Beast said casually. An icy arm locked around his waist. He didn't think it was meant to be affectionate – more something to stop him from turning suddenly.

Harry's insides curdled.

"Who are the Past and the Prophecy?" he tried. "The other … well, the others? What prophecy? Is it to do with the curse? Where are they?"

"That is not your concern." There was a hint of warning in Voldemort's tone. Harry's jaw clenched. If anything was his concern, he had a feeling that this was.

"Why won't you let me see you?" he asked.

"Because then you'd never leave your room again, which would be rather dull."

Harry bristled slightly.

"You look like Nameless, don't you? Riddle and Monster look alike, so it stands to reason."

He regretted the deduction when it escaped his lips … but honestly, twenty-four hours and his politeness was thrown out of the window with frustration.

Mercifully, the Beast seemed more amused than anything.

"Clever boy, Harry," he purred. "But you've seen the Riddle and the Monster, and the differences between them."

"You can't possibly be that bad-looking," Harry said incredulously. "Just show me. I'm going to die, so it's not like the truth is going to get out."

"Everything comes with a price."

Harry sighed and figured he probably should have expected that. Nobody here was helpful – except for Riddle, and that was only to the extent that he absolutely had to be.

"So what's your price list? A – what, my sense of taste? The colour of my eyes?"

"That's the Monster's price list, not mine. Your eyes are lovely though, so I might take them anyway."

It really was terrifying how conversationally the Beast made such a claim. Bile clawed up his throat.

"You and the Monster have a different price list?" Of course they did. Nothing here could be simple and easy, apparently! "Why?"

"We seek different things. You can see that in the fates of the offerings." Voldemort sounded bored now, but Harry had frozen all over again. He hadn't actually thought about that. 

He'd realized that there were different … things in the house, but… 

Maybe his brain had gone numb with the cold grip on his chin.

"So which one of you rips people to pieces and mutilates them?" He wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. He had a feeling he could guess, anyway.

"I do."

That wasn't what he was expecting. Harry nearly threw up on the spot. He should not have had breakfast.

"Why?"

"Prices, prices …" the Beast tsked.

Fantastic.

* * *

_Each seek that which they do not have, in different ways. The Monster will take your soul, slowly. It will ask for everything about you. I do not remember how to laugh anymore, but I can hear the sound of it coming out of his mouth when he took it for his own. They take the parts of an offering that they love, and keep them. It's why I started writing this down. Because, I think, out of all the things that they like about me, they liked my mind the most. It has already started._

_I cannot remember what I meant to say earlier, I think I must have traded it, but context would suggest that if one cannot explore the house by day, they must do so at night. You've probably guessed that it's a bad idea to walk the Riddle House by night. If you're not in the room, the Monster will take what he wants indiscriminately, and send the rest walking back home. Your best bet is to trade for safe passage for the night. He will ask for your name, but you must satisfy him with something else. If the price does not match the request, and you step out into the shadows, he will make up the debt – and once he's taken it, you can't get it back._

_Go to the left side of the house –_

* * *

"Anything interesting?" the Beast mocked. Well, Harry was pretty sure the man … creature … was mocking him. He wondered if the Beast was the one trying to impede the curse, or if it was the Monster. Then again, Riddle definitely was, considering how maddeningly vague he always was.

Harry wondered how stupid an idea it would be to ask about the left side of the house.

"What's your price list?" Maybe that would give him some clues on the matter.

"All of the bones in your left hand. Your eyelids. Your heart. Your tongue. Your kneecaps. It depends on what you want, Harry."

"Charming," Harry murmured. "Why haven't you killed me yet? The Monster couldn't, because I didn't leave the room. And what the hell would you even _do_ with my kneecaps?"

"You are the Offering. Nameless told me."

" _I_ told you that," Harry said, confused. Or was this … "Is this about me volunteering? What's so important about that?"

The Beast said nothing. Harry wanted to thunk his head against the table.

The book also said he had to confront each 'piece' if he wanted a chance of winning this 'game'. He was pretty sure it didn't count as confronting Voldemort if he never actually looked him in the face.

He was starting to see why people died doing this. If he gave his organs he was screwed. Thank god he still had his bloody tonsils in. The moves may have been unlimited, but there were only so many he could give until he lost the ability to play. He really didn't want to lose body parts.

"Any chance I can look at you without giving up my eyeballs?"

He had a feeling disbelief was suspending.

"What else do you have?" Voldemort returned, mouth against his ear once more.

Maybe he'd leave the Beast for last…

* * *

_Beware Eurydice. Beware the Prophecy. Beware the Kisses Cursed. Run. Get out. It's not safe. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am –_

* * *

Harry had flicked through the pages of the book, flicked to the end of the book even if he knew it could never be happy. The way it just cut remained unnerving, nonetheless.

By all the diagrams, all the notes and the planning, Hermione Granger had obviously been a very intelligent girl.

There was a bad taste in his mouth.

He'd spent the day reading, looking up information, making small talk with the Beast. He never got to actually look at him. The rooms in which he might have been able to were swathed in shadow, and the only thing facing over a table of cards was hellfire eyes in the darkness.

And in the quiet, Harry had noticed it.

It was more obvious now than the first night, when he'd been more consumed by the chill of the Beast's presence and his certainty of death.

Very soft, very quiet. Something _dripping_.

At first, he'd thought it must be the Beast tapping, or … something. But it wasn't. He had no idea what it was, and in the darkness, he couldn't see either. It gave him an uneasy feeling though.

This whole house gave him an uneasy feeling.

Even then, he preferred Beast to Monster. Even if he had no idea what, precisely, the Beast was keeping him alive for. Hermione had said he 'enforced rules', so maybe Harry simply hadn't broken any rules then.

He was probably going to die tomorrow.

The Riddle's repeated comments for most of the evening, as the bastard painting smirked at him, didn't help either.

"Not the shadow, but the clock. Not the curse, but the lock."

This time, he was prepared when the screaming started.

"You don't have to do that," Harry said, eyes squeezed shut against the terrible sound. "I know you're going to turn up. Most people would just say hello."

"One tends to need to have a name in order to greet, to be polite," the Monster returned. Harry glanced at Nameless, who was watching him with narrowed eyes. 

Harry squared his shoulders and focused on the Monster, taking a step forward.

"What is your price for safe passage in moving around for tonight?" he asked, chin jutting up. The Monster laughed, delighted. He wondered, unnerved, whose laugh it was using today. Which offering's.

"Your name," it cooed. "After all, you know mine."

Harry's teeth gritted.

"I'm not giving you a name."

"Then I'm not giving you any promises of safety." It gave him that sharp-mouthed grin again. "But feel free to try your luck anyway. Maybe I'll let you explore. Maybe I won't."

Harry's mouth felt horribly dry. He wanted more than anything to just cower back, to not step out there with that _thing_. It was even worse when he knew what the Monster could do, to some small extent.

He drew in a breath. He was the offering. He was what they wanted … he was not a sacrifice. He had power here. A game was made with the chance of winning, or it was slaughter. He had to believe that. If he didn't, all was lost.

Even after only a night and a day, he couldn't bear the thought of that.

Ginny might be picked again next year. Or somebody else. Nobody was safe. Not whilst the offerings were demanded.

"So there's nothing you want from _your_ offering then?" he asked. Nameless blinked at that, eyes starting to gleam with something that looked suspiciously like amusement. The Monster's head tilted.

"Who did you volunteer for?"

Harry's brow furrowed, not expecting the question.

"I'm sorry. Is that your price, knowing that?"

"No," the Monster said. "Tell me anyway."

"I'm not giving you her name, either," Harry said warily.

"Did you love her?"

Harry folded his arms, feeling rather exposed under the interrogation.

"Information comes with a price," he hedged. "You don't answer my questions, I'm not answering yours."

Nameless actually burst out laughing this time, and the Monster gave the painting a foul look. Then it gave Harry a discerning one, as if considering him properly for the first time.

"My price for safe passage is the first time you fell in love."

Harry nearly choked. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

Harry stared at the Monster, heart hammering in his chest. The first time he _fell in love?_ He didn't know much about love, or its price. But he figured that was important too – he wasn't an idiot.

They used to tell fairy-stories in the village, perhaps to try and keep people's hopes up about the situation. In those, at least, love was always held with the highest regard.

He wondered which one was more important – his name, or the first time he fell in love. If he'd ever even fallen in love – sometimes it could be hard to tell the difference between true love and some pale, desperate imitation of it, considering the world.

Maybe he had yet to fall in love, and the Monster would take the possibility of it away. Then again, if he died here, he would never fall in love anyway.

"My first kiss," he bartered. Its head tilted the other way, watching him.

"Bold, aren't you, Offering?" it murmured. Harry gave a grim smile in response to that, and waited.

"Your first kiss," the Monster repeated. "For safe passage there. Let's not pretend we don't know where you intend to go. The taste of rain in your mouth, for safe passage back."

Harry blinked. Tried to consider all the angles to that, painfully aware that he was wasting time every second he stood arguing. Was the taste of rain in his mouth really that important?

He looked to the painting for guidance.

"If you're stupid enough to deal with it, I'm not helping you," the Nameless said. Harry huffed and looked back at the Monster.

"Fine," he agreed. "Deal."

It smiled again, crooking its finger at him to beckon, leaning against the door.

Why was Harry getting the feeling he was going to regret this?

He marched out of the door.

* * *

_There were wild flowers, and bleak sunshine. It was springtime, as much as they ever got such a thing in the village._

_He was gathering berries with Ginny in the fields, a teasing anticipation in his stomach. She'd been giving him her best smiles all week._

_They'd stopped by the stream nearing the outlying borders, staring out into the wilderness beyond that marked the end of the village land. The end of the curse, too._

_Of course, they couldn't go there. Crossing the river was suicide, people had seen it happen._

_"I wonder what it's like," she murmured, eyes distant. “You know … elsewhere.” He'd squeezed her hand, and thought her hair looked like fire in the fading light._

_One thing led to another, and their lips had brushed, gently. The first time in many._

* * *

Harry gasped in surprise as he was immediately hauled away from the door. He was crowded up against the wall, lips pressed against his own as the memory flashed through his mind.

Then it was gone, and he was panting gently, the Monster's eerie face inches from his own. He cleared his throat.

He knew what he'd traded, vaguely, but it wasn't in his mind for him to find. The memory had vanished, sucked up into the Monster's mouth.

"How sweet," it said, nose wrinkling slightly. "Though, they normally are… Soft, full of promises and hope. It's like marzipan. I never really took you for a marzipan, offering."

"… are you going to get off me now? You promised me safe passage."

"I'm not hurting you," it countered. Harry glared.

"Passage requires movement. I don't have all ni–"

Lips crushed against his own once more, hard. Hands dug against his sides, as the Monster's mouth seared heat against his own.

He'd expected him to be cold, like the Beast. He hadn't expected him to feel like he was burning with fever, considering how he looked. He could feel those sharp teeth, and gave a small sound of protest as the taste of copper flooded his tongue.

The Monster simply kissed harder in response, one hand tangling in his hair, tilting his head back. A small moan escaped him, and that was swallowed up too.

He had no idea what was holding him in place, but he could feel himself wrapped up in something – lighter than silk and yet unyielding.

Then it disappeared, and the Monster stepped back.

Harry sucked automatically on his lower lip, and the cut on it.

"What the hell was that! That wasn't part of the deal – I'm bleeding, how is that safe passage?" he accused, eyes narrowed. If he felt at all flustered, he refused to admit it.

"First kiss," the Monster grinned. "I took yours. Then I decided you needed another, better one. Really, it's not fair you should die with such a terrible kiss as hers. After all, you're _my_ offering, aren't you?" Its eyes were rather vicious.

Right, yeah, he figured that was payback for trying to manipulate the deal. Bloody hell.

He was very glad he had safe passage right now.

He forced himself to concentrate, and strode away down the corridor, laughter ringing in his ears.

At least he wasn't dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **[The Monster](http://paper-ramblings.tumblr.com/post/78841071347/rdemon90-the-monster-from-the-fictions-kisses)** by rdemon90


	5. The Past and the Prophecy

There was something eerie about the Riddle House at night – and honestly, it was creepy enough in daylight.

He could _feel_ shadows flitting around him. He felt like he was being watched, too, and figured it must be the Monster – though surprisingly, he couldn't see the creature.

Doors opened before he touched them, and it didn't take long to cross the empty, immaculate rooms until he'd reached the left side of the house.

Initially, there was nothing different here. The house was symmetrically shaped, and it seemed that on first glance the rooms mirrored each other. He had a feeling he knew which room he was going to, by that.

Instead of a door, however, he reached a large portrait.

Like the Riddle and the Nameless, it was a life-sized painting. Like the Riddle and the Nameless, the portrait had the inscription of 'Tom Riddle, Jr.' at the bottom.

Unlike the Riddle and the Nameless, a child stared wide-eyed back at him.

The child looked like a younger version of the Riddle. Except softer – innocent. He was dressed in plain clothes, sitting on a bare floor in a grim, grey room unlike any he'd seen in the manor.

All of the rooms in the Riddle House, despite everything else, were lavish. Rich. He didn't know where this portrait was painted, but it wasn't in the manor. At least, not in the manor as he knew it.

"Hello," Harry said softly, trying for a smile. "Who are you, then?" He could make a guess. The child gave him a tentative smile in response, before it faded to nothing.

"I'm the Past," the boy said solemnly. "Have you come to play with me? Nobody ever comes."

Harry's chest ached. Was this who Riddle used to be before the curse? Before Voldemort came in? And yet, the Nameless had the inscription of ‘Tom Riddle’ on his portrait too…

"I'm looking for the Prophecy," he said. It gave him another small smile.

"Come on through then, Harry. I'll show you the way."

"I can come through the painting?" Harry's brows raised with surprise.

"Of course," Past replied. "You'll need to. The Riddle and the Nameless, too." It reached its hand out insistently.

Harry paused. He didn't want to doubt a child, but given his circumstances…

"I'll be able to get back out of the paintings again? How did you know my name?"

"I'm the Past," the other repeated. "Of course I know your name. I know all about where you came from. But you'll need to talk to the Prophecy about where you're going to go … so are you coming, or not?" It waggled its fingers impatiently.

"I'll be able to get back out of the paintings afterward?" Harry questioned again, jaw tight. The Past rolled his eyes.

"Yes."

Harry hesitated a moment longer – was this really a good idea?

But he also knew he needed to be back in his room by morning, or he was dead anyway. People had always said he was recklessly brave, and he'd proven it by volunteering. He may as well take the plunge and do so again.

He squeezed his eyes and stepped forward.

The next second, cool fingers were wrapped tight around his hand. His eyes snapped open.

He was in the room in the painting. He turned, sharply, to see the space he'd come from close to the sight of the Monster tearing towards them, mouth open in a silent scream. Then there were just grey walls, and nothing to link him to the Riddle House at all.

His insides lurched uneasily.

"Come on," Past said. "I'll show you the way." It headed out the door as Harry stared at his new surroundings. A bed, primly made. Seven stones on the windowsill.

"Where are we?" he asked, even as the room shifted around him. "Or … where were we?"

"Wool's Orphanage. 1936. Don't talk to any of the ghosts, you might get stuck."

There were so many parts of that comment he wanted to consider, that Harry scarcely knew where to start.

"And now?"

"Now we're going to see the Prophecy."

A graveyard loomed suddenly in front of them. It was the one on the grounds of the Riddle House, he knew. He could see the house towering above him – though it looked different to what he was used to.

The Riddle House that he knew had a faded grandeur. It was surrounded by shadow, always cold, and somehow darker. In this one, the windows were warm with lights.

Harry twisted his head, and he could see the village below. It was like getting hit by a bullet of nostalgia, a wretched homesickness, to see it sprawled cosily at the bottom of the hill.

He could make out the house he'd grown up in, what had been his home until everyone in it was sacrificed to the shadow of the curse one by one.

He swallowed thickly. It took him a minute to realize that they'd stopped. Harry looked around, surprised, and saw that the Past was staring at the headstone in front of them.

Harry felt the inscription in his gut, even before he read the name.

TOM RIDDLE

How exactly was that possible? He looked at the Past, askance. The child had a blank look on his face, all innocence gone.

"Will you play with me, Harry?" the boy asked softly. Harry's throat thickened.

"Play with you?" he repeated. "What would we be playing? Can we play after I've seen the Prophecy? I'm afraid I can't stay too long."

The Past looked at him sharply at that.

"No."

"… No?"

"I want to play now. I never have anyone to play with. You'll stay here with me."

"I can't stay here with you," Harry replied carefully. "I have a curse to break."

The child didn't so much as blink at him.

"You'll play with me, or I'll kill you. Then you'll be stuck with me, in this painting, forever. Then you'll have to be my friend."

This couldn't possibly be happening. Was nobody in this house, not even the _children_ , normal?

He could see the house darkening around him, like it did in the world he knew outside of the painting – shadows seeping into the world like the spread of ink on a page. The garden, too, was starting to creep alive around him. The undergrowth was starting to reach for him, the long uncut grass twisting like ropes, curling around his ankles as he kicked and stomped on it.

Harry tried to think quickly.

Honestly, he'd never had all that much experience with unruly children – let alone one like this. His fists clenched at his sides.

"Friends don't work like that," he replied. "You can't threaten someone to be your friend."

_Each seek that which they do not have, in different ways…_

"I can. And I will."

Roses, too, thorny and sharp – blooming bloody from the ground and pinning him to the headstone behind him. The headstone of Tom Riddle, and wasn't that a damn irony. They started to squeeze around his throat.

"I am the Offering, you will listen to me and not take what you haven't been offered!" Harry hissed. The thorns stopped just shy of cutting into his throat.

The Past stared at him flatly, fists clenched at its sides. Harry stared back hard, panting for breath.

"Now," he said, "let go of me."

The child's lips thinned petulantly.

" _Now,_ Tom Riddle," Harry said, heart hammering in his chest. Hermione had said to be careful what he named, but …

The reaction was instantaneous. He sprawled hard against the grass once more, as the roses shrank into themselves and the grass returned to normal length.

The thick, living darkness, however, wasn't fading.

He rubbed his throat and shoved himself up onto his knees, starting to get a feeling for the power of names here.

"I don't want a friend anyway," Tom spat back at him. "Friends are useless. Look where caring got you. You're going to die in this house, just like all of the rest of them. They always die."

"C'mere."

The Past looked at him suspiciously, but Harry just waited.

He … well. He knew he was supposed to hate the child, for trying to do this to him. Just like he should hate everybody in this house, with a loathing so fierce that it burned the heart right out of him.

But he couldn't hate a _child_.

The Monster was aware of its actions, so were the Beast and the Riddle and the Nameless. A child, caught up in a curse, didn't seem to have all that much choice in the matter.

And Harry knew what it was like to be lonely, far too well.

After a moment, the Past took a wary step forward, and Harry dragged him the rest of the way and pressed him close. The child immediately stiffened, but Harry held on, wrapping his arms firmly around the boy.

He was on a tight schedule, and hell knew how time passed in a painting if it wasn't all of eternity frozen at once, but…

_I have determined that you must confront each piece in full to adequately break the curse._

Eventually, he let go, hands resting on the boy's shoulders.

"You'll be out of the painting when I break the curse, promise," he said. "You're not a bad kid, Tom. Or at least … you don't have to be. Now, how about you show me where the Prophecy is?"

* * *

The Past – quiet once more – led him up to the house. Through the main entrance, now gleaming and bright, with a great diamond chandelier sparkling up above.

Harry imagined this was what the Riddle House must have looked like before the curse. It was beautiful, really.

In the ballroom, he caught snatches of a handsome young Riddle, like the Riddle from the portrait. But they bypassed that hall, and the music emitting from it, as the Past tugged him by the hand back to the left side of the house.

They reached the place where the Past's portrait was, and this time there was just a door. The child was avoiding his eyes now, and wouldn't look at him.

"Thanks," Harry said. When the Past said nothing, Harry reached for the door, opening it. Just as he was about to step forward, that small hand caught hold of his shirt again.

He turned on the spot again, just slightly, to look at the other.

"I can't see your future, Harry Potter," the child said quietly. "I'm tied to the past only."

"… that's okay?" Harry returned, not sure what to make of the statement. The boy's expression was blank, eyes more calculating now than they had been before. But not particularly malicious. Just … considering.

"Things are not as they seem. The future is always informed by the past. You need both, to see clearly."

Then he was gone, and there was just the door in front of him.

Harry stepped through.

* * *

He was in a nursery.

Harry hadn't expected a nursery, though given the portrait of the Past guarding the door, maybe he should have expected childhood and childhood things.

But all he could do was stare in horror.

He looked like the Past, but that, of all things, Harry had expected by now. Even if it left a terrible taste in his mouth, to know that the Prophecy was a child too.

And a child like this…

The Prophecy's eyes were closed, and it was chained to the wall by roses – thorny vines so similar to the ones Harry had just been ensnared by, like a machine wired up to the mainframe. In its hands, where it sat cross-legged on a bed, Harry could see a _heart_. A beating, bloody, human heart which rested in a small glass box with a big lock on the front of it, from which all of the chains originated.

The whole room around them was overgrown too. Harry couldn't help but remember some of the more fanciful myths about the monster in the house, back before he'd met the fragmented pieces.

"Oh my god," he whispered, unable to help himself. He'd thought he couldn't be more horrified by this house.

Its eyes opened. Unlike the Monster's eyes, which were pure black, or the Riddle's which were blue, or even like the Beast's or the Nameless' eyes in hellfire red, these were white.

No pupil. No iris. Just … white.

"Harry Potter."

"You're the Prophecy," he managed.

"You're the Offering. The saviour." Its lip curled slightly.

Saviour? At least that hopefully promised a chance of success? But he also remembered Hermione's warning. Why would she say to beware the Prophecy?

He was a child, just like the Past – and more so, he was chained up. How much damage could he possibly do?

"Whose heart is that?" Harry couldn't help but question. Its smile broadened.

"The Beast's."

Harry's eyes widened. Was that why there was dripping? Didn't one of the myths surrounding the deaths at the Riddle House say that the Beast took hearts to fill the space in his chest?

"Why hasn't he taken it back?"

"He cannot. Nor does he want to. A heart is a hurtful thing, and immortality, by all accounts, is not."

Immortality?

"Tell me what I need to do to fix this."

* * *

Harry raced out of the Prophecy room, his heart hammering in his chest.

This time there was no painting, just a normal door to let him back into the rest of the Riddle House. He darted through, only to come face-to-face with the furious expression on the Monster's face.

His eyes widened.

"You promised me safe passage …"

At least it wasn't morning yet.

"I see you're still alive."

"I'd have thought you'd sound more disappointed by that fact," Harry sniped. The Monster took a step closer to him, and Harry could see that the portrait of the Past was once more at his back.

It was almost as if the Monster was dripping shadows, like ink. They seemed to extend and reach towards Harry like tendrils, darkening the room around them until he couldn't even see the hand in front of his face.

"I'm the Offering," he tried again. "You can't take what I don't offer."

"And I am the Monster. I do not follow an Offering's rules," it snarled back at him. "I do not follow _anybody's_ rules. I care not for you, nor for prophecies or kisses cursed."

Harry squared his shoulders, sharp teeth inches away from his face.

"And yet, you offered me safe passage," he breathed. Hands caressed the side of his face, and his heart hammered wildly in his chest.

"You are a fool. You have no idea of the game you are playing."

"Actually," Harry snapped, "I finally do. And I know how to end this. True Love's Kiss. Giving the Beast his heart back. Is that why you tried to take all my kisses away from me in the first place? Well, sorry to disappoint, but you've failed."

It laughed, a horrible sound that sent hair rising on the back of his neck.

"You are a fool, Offering. And you are blind. You do not even see that which is standing right before you. Miss Granger figured it out, but you, _stupid boy_ , have not."

"You killed Hermione," Harry snarled back. "I see that clearly enough. The Beast told me."

Its jaw clenched, and it stared at him with wild eyes. A hand pressed tight into his chest, fingers raking in just as the Beast had on the first night.

"Not the shadow, but the clock. Not the curse, but the lock. Beware the kisses cursed, Offering. The _kisses cursed_."

"Yeah, I am. Beware of you," Harry said coldly. "And what your kisses can do, when you devour up everything in your path. A Beast cannot be evil, because it cannot know better. But a Monster can, can't it? You're the curse. You always have been."

"What do you think the Prophecy is wired up to?"

"I – what?"

"The Prophecy. What is it wired up to?"

"The Beast's heart."

"And?"

"And … the walls?"

"And the walls," the Monster said, very quietly. "And so the house, and so the board, and so the game. It changes the pictures around, smooth as clockwork. It keeps me out of your room."

"Well then, I have rather a lot to thank it for, don't I?" Harry snapped, chest heaving.

"And what is it? What is the Prophecy?"

"What?" Harry's brow furrowed. The Monster shook its head, laughed again. That awful laugh.

"It's a _child_."

"If you're trying to tell me something, by all means make it clearer, or step aside and honour your vow," Harry growled. The Monster stared at him a moment longer, expression hard and unforgiving, before finally it just shook its head and stepped aside.

"If I were you, I wouldn't walk the house at night again. You've chosen your side."

Then it vanished in front of him as the first light of dawn hit the floor.

Harry swore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **[Past and his Doll](http://lydiatheda.deviantart.com/art/Past-and-his-Doll-440399688)** , by Lydia Theda


	6. The Heart of the Beast

"You should not be here."

Harry whipped around fast, just as a hand landed on his neck. Too late for restraint. Too late not to _see_.

His mouth dried, first with how the Beast had got there so fast, and second with the possibility of fast-approaching death. But ultimately, in the burnt-gold strokes of dawn and maybe the last seconds of his life… 

All he could possibly do was stare.

Scarlet eyes widened and burned beneath his scrutiny. Harry's heart raced.

The Beast looked like the Nameless, that much was true. Same eyes, same hairless head and lipless mouth, no nose and almost skeletal features, but … _christ_ …

"Your chest …" he mumbled.

Of course, the Beast's heart was in a box, and so it couldn't possibly be in his chest too, but…

It would have been easier, in a way, if there was nothing where the organ was supposed to be. That could be expected, anticipated.

Instead, there was a red rose where the heart should have been, the stem of it taking the place of the sternum. The thorns, however, were grotesquely elongated, wrapping and twining around the rib cage and disappearing into the skin. There was only a thin, translucent layer of skin, pale as glass, atop the ribs. Easily seen through.

He was starting to wonder if there wasn't a thing about the roses.

"Isn't that painful?" Harry's voice cracked.

If the heart was wired to the Prophecy, and the Prophecy to the house – then this was the same, on the physical scale of a body. Harry swallowed thickly.

The dripping seemed to come from blood hitting the rose petals, and sliding down. It was as if Voldemort had thorns in his veins, too. As he watched, one of the petals fell gently towards the ground, vanishing right as it reached the bottom of his ribs.

The Beast continued to stare back at him, even more livid now. Harry took a step back, but the Beast just moved with him.

"You should not be here," Voldemort said again, voice softer than before. Harry tensed.

"You don't want to kill me," he said, fingers sliding around a freezing wrist. Honestly, considering the situation, he wasn't remotely comfortable with having the other's hand on his throat. He felt like he was going to be sick. "I talked to the Prophecy. I can help you."

The Beast's head tilted to the side, a fluid, reptilian movement – entirely too predatory for Harry's liking.

"I told you not to come to this side of the house. You are a fool."

"Monster said that too." Harry forced a faint grin, frantically trying to think of an escape plan. A way out of this. Maybe … maybe if he just got to his room, he would be safe? "Why do neither of you want me talking to the Prophecy?"

Maybe, if the Monster couldn't enter his room, nor could the Beast? He could bloody well hope.

He could feel the house shifting around him, starkly visible in the growing light of dawn.

"I never thought I'd agree with the abomination about anything," Voldemort said coldly.

Harry took another step back, tugging at the Beast's hands, but the fingers only constricted tighter on his throat in response.

Well, it solved the problem of trading something to look at the Beast, at least. Even if he'd taken his prize accidentally, he'd taken it nonetheless. Considering all this emphasis on offerings, maybe there was something to be said about the power of taking, too.

He was getting the horrible feeling, though, that he might pay the price anyway – with his life. His jaw clenched.

"Why shouldn't I talk to the Prophecy?" he asked again. "Do you not want the curse to be broken?"

"Prophecies are tricky things," the Beast said. "So are children. You may talk to the Prophecy all you wish, at night."

"What's that supposed to mean? You may as well tell me, before you presumably try and kill me." Harry kept his gaze locked on Voldemort, as if looking away would break the spell. Provoke the other into attacking. "Also … roses?"

Maybe it would break the spell. The man was called 'the Beast' after all.

"Not the shadow, but the clock. Not the curse, but the lock."

"Just because the lot of you keep saying that, doesn't mean I know what it means," Harry hissed, frustrated. "But I do know that I'm going to give you a heart again. That's how I end this, isn't it? The Prophecy told me. True Love's Kiss," Harry dared.

"That's how they refer to me."

"What?" Harry's brow furrowed.

"The shadow," Voldemort murmured, watching him inscrutably. "It's what your village used to call us, before they called us a curse. The shadow upon the town. A shadow is temporary, it passes. All shadows must end when they reach the light, by definition. Curses have connotations of something far more permanent – something deliberately inflicted – than a shadow, which is just the byproduct of something else."

Harry blinked. Why couldn't the Beast have told him this before? Was it because he hadn't met all of the pieces? Or because he hadn't met the Prophecy?

If … if the Prophecy really was wired to the game, controlling the board, like the Monster had suggested … then the Prophecy controlled what questions the pieces could and could not answer. After all, if something was out of the jurisdiction of the Riddle, it was in the Prophecy's hands, unless it was within the Monster’s domain.

Maybe certain moves could only be made under certain conditions. Hermione had said that though the moves were unlimited, there was always a price to be paid for them.

Considering the price was currently looking to be his life, that wasn't all that comforting a thought.

_Not the shadow, but the clock … not the curse, but the lock…_   
_Beast by day, Monster by night. Beware the war, when shadow meets light._

"I don't understand." His eyes moved over the rose on Voldemort's chest.

"It can be difficult to see in darkness, but you do seem more obtuse than most. Sometimes, I feel I should kill you for that alone."

The fingers tightened again, this time to the point where he couldn't breathe.

"If you're the shadow … but you're not a shadow … because you're a … clock? If you're a clock, what would you be counting down to? Or am I supposed to be ignoring you and focusing on a clock?" he wheezed.

This was maddening.

He'd never been good at riddles. There was an awful irony to that, now.

But the one thing he'd always been good at was surviving.

Harry couldn't help but notice that for all the Beast clenched an iron, suffocating grip around his windpipe … he hadn't killed him yet. And out of all the ways to murder someone, there had to be more effective methods.

He'd yet to be ripped into pieces, for one.

And if the Beast wasn't a shadow, but rather a clock … then did that mean that the curse was a lock, by the same logic? Harry had no idea, but it was an ominous thought. Or maybe not.

Maybe the curse was a lock, in the sense that breaking the curse broke the lock on the Beast's heart.

"I cannot say."

Harry would have sighed, if he had the air to. He squirmed in the relentless grip, as Voldemort studied him with cool eyes. Black spots popped in his vision. He was on the verge of passing out, when the Beast finally let go, eyes flaring from scarlet to white.

Harry doubled over, nearly collapsing to his knees, coughing and gasping down air. He massaged his throat gently, glancing up. The Beast's eyes were red again, so he almost thought he had imagined the change.

"Why didn't you kill me? That's what you do, isn't it?"

"To offerings, yes. Like Miss Granger."

"I'm an offering!"

"No, you are The Offering."

"Because I volunteered? What difference does it make?"

The Beast paused. "An offering is offered up by the village, and thus has already been sacrificed. The Offering is an act of offering, in itself, ongoing. He who is offering. You do not yet belong to us – I cannot take that which you don't offer."

Harry's eyes widened. Well, that explained a lot.

"And the Monster?" he queried.

"The Monster does not abide by the rules. He will take indiscriminately, if you leave your room. He is – as Miss Granger put it – the chaotic agent in the game."

"He didn't take from me."

"You made a vow of safe passage with him. He was bound by it to try and protect you," the Beast said. "He must want your soul very much, to agree to such a thing. He wants you to like him. I presume he kissed you."

The Beast's lips pressed thin with distaste. Colour flooded Harry's cheeks.

"Well, it was that or my first love, so I think I did okay," Harry snapped.

"You shouldn't trust his kisses," Voldemort said. "They're dangerous."

"Kisses cursed?" Harry snorted – still eyeing the rose in Voldemort's chest. Really, it did have to hurt, all those thorns twisting inside him. And he couldn't help but notice that the Beast hadn't answered his question about the pain.

"Has anyone told you how the curse came to be?" Voldemort asked quietly, hauling him up. A hand pressed against the small of his back to turn him around and guide him further away from the left side of the house. Towards the dining hall.

Harry's head twisted around.

"No. The Prophecy only spoke about the future. I believe his exact words when I asked him how to fix this – meaning the curse – were 'a true love's kiss' and ‘giving Voldemort the heart of an offering'. Then he told me I should get back to my room before dawn."

"And the Past? What did the brat say to you?"

"Outside of that he'd kill me if I wasn't friends with him?" Harry raised his brows. "That things are not what they seem, and that the future is informed by the past."

"He told you things are not as they seem?"

Harry froze at the sudden fury in the Beast's tone. His jaw clicked shut.

"He said I need both the past and the future to see clearly," Harry replied tersely. "Honestly, a bit of clear vision would be very useful now. The lot of you aren't exactly as helpful as you could be. Speaking of – what the hell is this about sides; and you still haven't explained the roses?"

There were far too many questions that demanded answers, here.

Voldemort came to a stop.

"Not the shadow, but the clock," he said again.

"Yes, you're not a shadow, you're a clock. I got that part, if that's what you're trying to say," Harry said irritably. "What are you counting down to, then?"

"The Prophecy counts a different clock, to I."

"What are you counting down to?" Harry asked again. Suddenly, there was something that was alarmingly close to pity in the Beast's gaze. It made Harry's insides lurch. He repeated the question, louder this time.

"When the last petal falls, nobody will be able to break the curse anymore."

Harry's gaze locked on the rose uneasily. He tried to judge how many petals it had left. Not too few, but definitely not as many as he would have liked.

"And I am, presumably, dead then?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"On you."

Well, that wasn't the most illuminating of answers. Harry let out a deep breath.

"And the offerings? Will the offerings stop if the curse cannot be broken?"

"No. It will never stop," Voldemort said. "It will spread."

"… what do you mean, it will spread?"

"Beyond the borders of the village. The shadow will spread, and devour everything in its path until nothing is left." The Beast sounded far too casual for Harry's tastes. His mouth dried out. They were in the dining room, but he had no appetite left.

He looked at the rose again, blood running cold.

"And the Monster, where does he come into this? He's … trying to stop the curse from being broken? So that the shadow spreads?"

"It is difficult to say what the Monster wants. Monsters can be as tricky as Prophecies can. He does generally attempt to stop offerings from advancing in the game, despite offering a piece of the puzzle himself."

"You said generally."

The Beast looked away and said nothing in response. Harry's teeth gritted, and he resisted the urge to rub his temples. He was exhausted and he could feel a headache building.

"Why are you suddenly being so forthcoming? I thought only the Riddle and the Monster could answer my questions openly." Harry asked.

"The board has shifted. The past is open to you."

Harry's eyes flickered. He was silent for a long moment, mulling over the new information. He didn't exactly miss that 'the past' being open to him could be taken two ways either.

"You asked if anyone told me how the curse started."

"Yes," the Beast said, a small smile curling his lipless mouth.

"How did it?"

"You would need to consult the Past for that – not now," Voldemort interrupted, as Harry started to move towards the left side of the house.

"You're seriously still stopping me from going to the left side of the house? Why? I already know what's there."

"Prophecies are tricky things, and children demand amusement. Why do you think this is a game? It doesn't have to be."

Harry's eyes widened slightly.

"Why does the Prophecy only want me visiting at night? That's when the Monster is wandering around."

"Yes. You have read Miss Granger's notes."

Harry definitely had a headache.

"I have a feeling you're referring to a specific comment, but I don't know what it is," he said. The Beast looked at him with what could only be called irritated contempt.

"You are unbelievably obtuse. The Monster wanders around at night. Yes."

"… the Prophecy wants me to have to – oh." Harry could have hit himself. "Night forces me to confront the Monster. Offerings would stay in the room, otherwise. Where they're safe.” He frowned. “I thought everybody here hated the Monster."

"Riddle does not. Everybody else does. But he is a piece as much as any other."

"And to break the curse, I have to confront all the pieces," Harry sighed. And so the Prophecy forced him to do so, by stripping away the other options. "You'd think, if the Prophecy wants the curse broken so badly, that he'd stop you from tearing the offerings to pieces."

The Beast just looked at him again, like he was being incredibly moronic. It was getting tiring. That look of 'you're missing something’.

"I take it you're not going to explain?"

"I am not the Riddle. I am not compelled to answer you."

In other words, he was annoying the other.

Fantastic.

Harry glanced at the rose again.

"Do you have any way of pruning it?" he asked quietly. "Roses can be difficult to take care of." And this one was clearly overgrown. Oh, it looked remarkably good considering a body was hardly ideal for growing roses, and he could only assume it was in some way … enchanted, but… 

Voldemort looked at him with something like surprise.

"So are hearts, or so I am led to believe," was the response. Harry dropped his gaze for a moment.

"I used to take care of the flowers in the village. When we had any, anyway. Do you want me to – can I –"

"I would not trust you to take a pair of scissors to my chest," the Beast said coldly. "You might tear it out."

"But you're in pain," Harry said. "There's no way you're not. You have – you have a bloody rose in your chest, it –"

"I could still kill you."

Harry's chin jutted up defiantly.

"Yes, but you don't want to. If you wanted to, you would have already done so. But you need me. To break the curse. You want –" The memory of the Beast digging his nails into his chest flashed through his mind. "You want my heart. I – oh my god. You took it literally. ‘The heart of an offering.’ You actually _take_ – you do know that ‘the heart of an offering’ isn't literal?"

Voldemort's expression was stony.

"Don't be ridiculous, of course it is. What else would it be?"

Now Harry's chest was really aching.

"Love. Giving someone a heart, or possessing someone's heart, is a euphemism for love."

"No."

"Yes!"

"I have a rose in my chest. I daresay an actual heart will be of far more use, and has been of far more use, than any of your sentimental nonsense."

And with that, the Beast turned and stalked back towards the left side of the house.

* * *

The Riddle didn't look at him when he finally managed to find his way back to his room.

His head was spinning with new information. He felt almost dizzy with everything that had happened.

"The Prophecy said that the curse is broken by True Love's Kiss. Giving Voldemort a heart. I have to kiss the Beast and mean it, right?"

Of course, it seemed easy – except for the fact that he couldn't exactly fall in love on demand, even if he had wanted to. And he certainly didn't love the Beast.

The Riddle shot him a dark look – and it was only then that he realized that the painting was _furious_ with him. He came to a halt.

"Or … not?" he added. "Are you annoyed that I made a deal with the Monster?"

But the Beast had just said that the Riddle was the only one who even liked the 'abomination'.

"What did you think of him, Harry?"

"Of whom? The Prophecy?"

"Yes."

Harry hesitated, trying to measure his words carefully.

"I felt sorry for him. He's a child. Being wired up like a machine can hardly be a pleasant existence."

"And being trapped in a painting, by all accounts, is so much fun."

"Trapped in a painting?" It was the first time Harry had heard it phrased in such a way. He couldn't help but remember the Past's comments too, and recall the knowledge that he could enter the paintings.

Indeed, if Hermione was to be believed and he had to confront each piece before kissing the Beast, then surely he would have to?

He studied the backdrop of the Riddle's portrait for the first time. It seemed to be the very room that he himself was in, mirrored. How dangerous could that be?

"You observe much, and see little," the Riddle said finally. "Perhaps because seeing will prove too painful an experience, while ignorance is bliss."

Harry's head tilted.

"Hermione said to beware the Prophecy." Among other things. "Because he controls the board?"

"What is a Prophecy?"

"A child." That was what they all seemed to be caught up about, certainly. The Riddle's lips curled, though his eyes remained deadly and cold.

"Indeed, he is. But what is an actual prophecy?"

"A … prediction of the future? A foretelling of something that will happen?"

"Prophecies are, by definition, a controlling agent. They are fate. They dictate a particular series of events to happen, out of the numerous potential futures that can occur within the parameters of free will."

"And the Monster is the counter," Harry said. "The chaotic agent. Yes, I already figured that out. I'm not completely stupid. The Prophecy and the Monster don't get along."

He'd seen the Monster running towards him in the painting, after all, even as a portal closed on it. If the Prophecy controlled the paintings, then he would assume that had been the Prophecy blocking the Monster's advance.

Was that why the Monster had complained of sides? The Monster's side – whatever it was the Monster wanted – and the Prophecy's side?

"And children?" Riddle questioned.

"What?"

"Children are creatures of infinite possibility. The whole of the future is open to them, theoretically, because they have yet to live them. And children are known to be imaginative."

"But the children in this house aren't," Harry murmured after a moment. "One is, like you, trapped in a painting, and stuck specifically in the past, not the future. And the Prophecy is … well. If a prophecy is fate, that's not a limitless future. You just said that. Prophecies dictate a certain future, or try to. The Prophecy is a child in chains."

"Not the curse, but the lock," Riddle stated.

"I break the lock, and the Beast's heart is no longer in a box? The Prophecy is no longer in chains?" The Riddle was giving him a look as if he was an idiot now. He was getting sick of that look and – oh. Oh god. "All of them?" Harry yelped.

"You have unlocked the Past. Information pertaining to the past. With time, all things in this house become unlocked."

It was amazing that everything he learned simply left him more confused.

But either way, he needed keys. And apparently, he'd done something to unlock the Past. Was it because he'd confronted the child in full? He had no idea.

It seemed simple enough. In the way a true love's kiss was simple.

Except, well… 

Sometimes, things were locked for a reason.


	7. The Promise of a Future

The Monster didn't turn up that night.

Harry wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. On one hand, he didn't have to listen to the creature screaming at him with the voices of his loved ones. The Riddle had since told him that the Monster did it by plucking the sounds out of Harry's memories, turning his own mind back on him as a weapon.

On the other hand, the Monster not being outside his room begged the question of where the bastard was instead, and also left Harry thoroughly stuck in his room, unable to go and see the Past.

Of course, he could have sprinted across the manor; but that seemed a stupid thing to do without safe passage – and if the Monster caught him out of the room without that deal, he was probably a dead man walking. And he couldn't make a deal if the creature wasn't there to deal with.

All in all, quite the conundrum.

Which left him with the Nameless, and the Past's words sinking in his head about portraits. A hairless eyebrow arched at his staring. Harry steeled himself, before stepping close to the painting, hesitantly reaching out a hand and – he couldn't step through.

His hand was met with solid canvas, though You-Know-Who's hand shifted so that the palm pressed outward, fingers splayed against his own. It was just paint though.

Maybe he'd been wrong.

"Not yet," Nameless said clinically. Harry's head tilted with thought, working around the statement.

"I haven't unlocked you. How do I do that? Are you able to tell me? I have to confront you fully, but to confront you I have to enter your painting, right? Like I did with the Past?"

The Nameless inclined his head in turn, just slightly, scarlet eyes fixed consideringly on his face.

"You can't even tell me how to get into your painting?" Harry snapped, frustrated. "How is anyone supposed to win at this?"

"They're supposed to have a measure of intelligence, I would imagine," the Nameless drawled. Harry glared at him and yanked his hand back. "Or," the portrait continued, "they could rely on other people."

Harry followed the painting's gaze – to Hermione's diary, resting on his bed.

"I read all of it, there was nothing," he said, confused. "She said she'd write down the prices of the different moves, but –"

"Page 23," was the response. Harry's brow furrowed, but he crossed the room, squinting at Hermione's handwriting through the unnatural darkness.

_If one is first, then his twin is last,_  
_Reaching the future means exploring the past._  
_To find an answer, one must know what to ask,_  
_And only then can you see behind the mask._  
_But offering be wary, these things come with a fine,_  
_Though kisses exchanged can be done by the time._  
_But most of all be cautious in closing the door,_  
_Everybody knows that roses have thorns._

Harry blinked. Read it again. Then once more.

"You lot really hate straight answers, don't you?" he grumbled. He rubbed his temples and tried to think, glancing at the door every so often.

"Every curse has its trials. You must prove yourself worthy," the Nameless replied. Harry resisted the urge to glare at the infuriating blob of paint again.

"Obviously, the second line refers to needing to go through the Past to reach the Prophecy. Prophecies are future events after all, or based in them at least."

He glanced at You-Know-Who, but all he got was a sly sort of smile. Harry was going to assume that meant he was correct, and bit his lip.

The Beast had indicated that Harry had unlocked the Past, and so … did that make the Past 'one', the first one to be unlocked?

"Oh god, there's an order I have to unlock and confront you in?" Harry groaned.

"All locks have their combinations," the Nameless said. 

Harry had never wanted to bash his head in more. "And what happens if I open them in the wrong order?"

"Then maybe you won't open what you intended to. In which case, you will probably be sent back to your loved ones in a matchbox, and the world will fall into darkness."

Harry blinked, both at the answer and the utterly casual tone it was spoken in. 

"Charming," he muttered. 

Harry looked at the riddle again, repeating the lines to himself and stifling a yawn. He might actually get some sleep tonight, since the Monster wasn't screaming at him. But at the same time, he really did need to talk to the Past again.

The Prophecy could be useful too. Maybe he could deal with it, if it controlled the house.

Still…

"A riddle is a question," he murmured. "And an answer. A question that provides its own answer. The Riddle?"

All the Nameless did was stare at him.

It seemed it was going to be a very long night.

* * *

"You look remarkably rested," the Beast stated. The other was sitting opposite him at the breakfast table, apparently no longer concerned about hiding his appearance, now that Harry had already seen him.

Harry did wish he didn't have that grotesque sight in front of him whilst he was trying to eat, though. He made a pointed effort not to stare, though his eyes kept flicking back to the bloodied rose.

"So …" he began, when the silence continued to stretch awkwardly. He prodded at his breakfast, full of fine fruits and luxurious delicacies not available in the village.

The Beast continued to stare at him. Just like Nameless did. Saying nothing.

"So," Harry started again, pushing on determinedly. "You said that you and the Prophecy were counting to different clocks. Your clock is when the curse can no longer be broken, and so will spread everywhere. What's the Prophecy counting to?"

"You will find that prophecies are remarkably self-fulfilling," the Beast said softly.

Harry's brow furrowed.

"And breaking the curse is what I'm supposed to do, so why would he be counting to something else?"

This time, he knew he wasn't imagining the Beast's eyes burning white, away from scarlet, like a flare. He nearly reared back on the spot. They were scarlet once more a few seconds later, and Harry's mouth felt unbearably dry.

"I cannot say," the Beast stated.

"That was the Prophecy, wasn't it? He controls the board. He just stopped you from answering me," Harry said, heart pounding in his chest.

Hermione had said to beware the Prophecy.

The Beast pulled out a pair of scissors from the folds of his silken cloak, and held them out over the table.

"Prune them. It might give you some more time, if the rose is adequately gardened."

* * *

Harry still felt uneasy.

The Riddle had just been canvas too, not letting him through.

Each day passed, another petal fell, and the pattern of the Monster's absence repeated the next few nights, leaving him no room to move.

Having a safe room suddenly didn't seem like such a blessing.

* * *

"I would strongly advise you against this course of action," the Nameless said quietly. Harry ignored him, making sure the knives he'd taken from the kitchen were in place.

Anything that he could possibly use as a weapon, if he had to.

"Offering. Do not presume to pretend that you cannot hear –"

"Can I afford to wait?" Harry turned to the painting, eyes tight. "No, I don't think so."

"You realize this is what the abomination wants," the Nameless said, eyeing him. "And that those sharp little trinkets of yours will do you no good. He might take your strength of will first."

Bile clawed up Harry's throat.

"I must be able to do something against him."

"There's a power in names, you know that, and a power in offering."

Harry turned to look at the painting again. It gave him a cruel sort of smile.

"You're being oddly helpful today," Harry murmured. "Should I be suspicious?"

"Probably, but you seem to be a rather stupidly trusting creature, so I would not bother," the Nameless replied. Harry sneered at him.

"You'd miss me if I died and got turned into an empty husk," he muttered.

"No doubt. If only because of the wasted potential."

Harry wasn't sure if that was supposed to make him feel better or not. He studied the painting a moment longer, before bracing himself and striding out into the night of Riddle Manor.

* * *

The screaming had started the second he stepped out; but about halfway to the Past's painting, it stopped.

That was the only warning Harry got.

One second it was just ridiculously dark, the next second the darkness around him had weaponized. Vicious tendrils of shadow lashed out, coiling around his wrists and ankles and throat.

He struck back instinctively with the knife, but the blade just went through the seemingly solid shadows around him. Harry swore.

_Names, names and offerings –_

"My, my. You really are a beautiful little fool." The breath was hot against his ear.

Harry twisted his head, but there was no one there. He kicked at the shadows, but to no avail, and _he never thought he'd be literally fighting darkness._

"Tom –" he began, hoping naming would have the same effect here as it had on the Past. Shadows wrapped tightly around his mouth, muffling the sound.

"Naming me, offering?" The Monster finally appeared in front of him, gaze colder than he'd ever seen it. "Now that's just rude. But you've already proven yourself to be a rude, foolish little thing. I expected far more from the Offering. At least you're pretty."

Harry snarled, eyes wild.

It seemed 'naming' did work, at least – if the Monster reacted to it so.

His heart was hammering wildly in his chest as he squirmed on the spot. The Monster gave him a sharp-toothed smile. Pale hands reached out, draping over his shoulders to hang against his back. The creature pressed against him, blazingly warm in comparison to the chill in the air.

Was this to be how he died? After all of this? No. Harry hadn't put up with all the crap and the mysteries to let it end like this.

"What do you think I should take first, hmm?" the Monster breathed against his neck, head tilting and tongue pressing and sucking against his throat. "The taste of your skin? The sound of your voice? Your will? I think I'd rather see you screaming and fighting me until the end. I'd like to see what sounds could come out of your mouth before I steal them."

Harry shuddered, eyes wide.

"I could take away your pain, if you asked me very nicely," the Monster continued, nails sharp against his back and dragging with excruciating slowness through the material of his shirt.

Harry would have slammed his head forward, if the Monster's other hand hadn't fisted into the back of his hair to hold him still.

He tried to think. He may not have been good at riddles, but he'd always been pretty handy in a fistfight – it was just hard to fight when he was wrapped in shadows, like the coils of some snake.

"I can't ask very nicely when you're practically gagging me." Of course, the response came out utterly muffled, but Harry hoped the Monster could at least interpret his seething sentiment by the expression on his face.

Sharp teeth bit down on his collarbone, causing Harry to give a cry and arch, not expecting it. It felt like a shock had just gone through him, searing his skin.

He felt a trail of blood bloom, trickling sticky and wet down his chest. He swore again, trying to kick out.

"Or maybe I'd take your pleasures away from you," the Monster continued, with a voice like liquid sin. Hands dipped down lower, before – "Ah, you haven't had that yet. No awkward, fumbling first times in that delightfully messy brain of yours."

It was reading his _mind?_ Of course it was. Harry would have flushed crimson, if the situation weren't so dire. He might have flushed anyway, but he was also filled with a fresh determination.

He concentrated on his most repulsive memories; on the feeling when he once burnt his hand for the first time, on living with the Dursleys before they were taken.

Everything foul and overly bitter that was left to him.

The Monster recoiled in surprise, shadows and all, and Harry hit the floor. Lunged a split second later, grabbing the knife and putting it to the creature's throat.

Shadows were intangible and strange, but he was pretty sure the monster itself was more solid.

"Oh my dear, do you really think that would stop me?"

Harry's eyes widened again as the Monster flickered like a bad connection, vanishing from his grip and appearing a metre away from him.

"Would you like to try running, instead? We could play hide-and-seek? Past could play too; he loves that game," it continued.

Harry sucked in a sharp breath.

"You're not going to kill me," he stated firmly. "Tom."

"Ooh, it sends a shiver down my spine when you use that name," it said all too cheerfully. "Like somebody's walked over my grave."

Harry yelped at finding the creature suddenly behind him. It twisted his hand, sending the knife spinning away uselessly.

"I don't kill people, offering," the Monster murmured against his ear. "Their hearts are, technically, still beating."

Harry whipped around, but the Monster had flickered and vanished again. It was maddening – more like dealing with a ghost, than anything else. Some type of poltergeist.

God, it really was a _monster._

Harry thought fast, the tendrils already creeping towards him again. It made his gut lurch – the startling clarity that he wouldn't be leaving this as himself. Not really. Who knew what the Monster had already taken?

"You can't take anything I haven't done yet," he said quickly. "Can you? So it seems a waste to eat me all up now. Waste of resources. Of possibility. It's like getting a starter and a salad, instead of a main meal and dessert."

The Monster came to a stop in front of him, head tilting to one side.

Harry's fists clenched at his sides – but he squared his shoulders and stared back, neither cowering nor dropping his gaze.

After a moment, the Monster began to laugh.

"You're suggesting I keep you alive so that I can get a better meal later? How thoughtful of you," it crooned.

"I'm saying that events and experiences of the future would act on a cycle, wouldn't they? The future is infinite possibility. You could get all the … uh, sustenance" – Harry swallowed – "you needed or wanted from that, without needing to leave people … as you do."

The Monster's head tilted the other way, those black eyes fixed unnaturally upon his face, seemingly drinking him. A small smile crossed its lips.

"Maybe there's hope for you yet, my offering."

"So we … uh, we have an agreement?" Harry checked warily. "Because I'm on something of a tight schedule here, and I'd rather not be on the other side of the house at dawn."

Pale fingers caught the side of his face, caressed his cheek.

"The others won't be happy with you for aligning yourself with me."

"Then maybe they should make this house less of a death trap for the guests," Harry replied. The Monster snickered almost fondly.

"I make demands on your future experiences, and take those for my own once they are done. You will be frozen in your development, just like all of us, constantly reverting each night to where you are now, like the point of trauma," it said more seriously now. "In return, I will not take any more of your past and present identity that I have not already facilitated."

"Deal," Harry managed. "Though right now, I really need to go and talk to the Past, and take a rain-check on … er, new experiences."

He clamped down on any possible panic before it could rise.

The Monster hummed.

"I'd stop trying to solve this curse, if I were you. Let the world fall to darkness; I'll look after you. I can make sure you have a good time of it, here at the centre of things."

Harry tilted his cheek away, taking a step back.

"I'm not picking sides. No matter what you or the Beast seem to think."

"You're going to have to," the Monster said quietly. "Survival will only take you so far. Prophecies are the most self-fulfilling of things."

Harry hesitated. He knew he should go to the painting now, talk to the Past, figure this out, but…

"The Prophecy," he said. "Beast suggested that he was counting down to something else. Something that wasn't the time limit of the curse. Of the clock. Do you know what it’s counting down to?"

"Of course."

"Will you tell me? As a mark of goodwill?"

"Tell me your name, and I will tell you what the Prophecy is counting to."

Bloody hell. He'd be stupid to agree. 

The Monster raised its brows. "Tick tock," it reminded mockingly. Harry's jaw clenched.

"I am the Offering. My name is Harry Potter."

"Harry Potter …" It snatched upon the name like a delicacy, something revered. Harry felt a shudder go down his spine.

"Well?" he demanded.

"Prophecies are self-fulfilling," the Monster said again. "Not the shadow, but the clock. Not the curse, but the lock. The curse is the lock on us. It keeps most of us frozen in our positions in the game, in these forms."

Harry's mouth felt dry.

"Most of all be cautious in closing the door. Everybody knows that roses have thorns," he whispered.

"A lock is what keeps the door shut. Doors are not one-way. If it’s open, you can step in and progress … but you cannot control what comes out. The Beast told you that if the curse was not broken, then the shadow will spread."

"Yes. Which is why I'm trying to break the curse," Harry said, frustrated.

"But the future is not fixed, which is why prophecies do their best to be self-fulfilling. They are a statement of inevitability in an ever-changing world."

"So … what does that mean?"

"A child is a creature of infinite possibility. If the Past has all things before in his head, then the Prophecy is insane – for all the futures in _his_ head are always shifting."

The house was starting to rattle warningly around him, and Harry glanced at their surroundings uneasily.

"I don't understand."

"Of course, the Prophecy wants the curse broken first and foremost, and will do anything to get its way. But it has contingency plans in place for all outcomes, not merely the one it is attempting to push. If the curse is not broken, it still requires the mainframe."

"And the Prophecy is the mainframe," Harry said, remembering how the child was chained up to the house.

"Do you really think a child wants to spend its whole life chained to the nursery wall? If the curse is unbroken, all of the rest of us are free to wander at will, but the Prophecy is not. It is at the _heart_ of this curse." The Monster gave a vicious sort of smile. "It's the power hub that keeps the rest of us running."

"But the Prophecy doesn't want to do that," Harry realized. Why would anyone, let alone a child easily bored, want to spend its whole life in one place? It would have complete power over the future, without being able to have its own.

Each piece wanted what it didn't have. The Prophecy did not have freedom away from fate.

"But to keep the system running, a mainframe is needed," the Monster said, watching him closely, a rather cruel expression on its face. "If you cannot break the curse, _Harry_ , I can assure you that the Prophecy will most definitely try and leave you in its place. How do you fancy spending all of eternity chained to the wall with your heart in a box?"

Harry's throat seized.

"And did you consider, perhaps, that some boxes are locked for a reason?"

Harry fled to the painting, the sound of his own laughter ringing in his ears.

* * *

The Past was watching him, clutching a doll in his small hands.

A pretty, red-headed doll, with green eyes and a look of anguish.

Harry's insides rolled as he eyed it, coming to a halt before the painting.

"Will you play with me today, Harry?" the Past asked. "We would like you to."

"Who's we? Your … uh, your doll?"

"Her name is Lily. Please come play with us."

"Lily." Harry felt like he'd been punched in the gut. Lily as in his _mother_ Lily?

"If you stay in the painting with us, the Monster can't get you," the Past said, something almost desperate on his small face now. Desperate and hungry. "No future can."

"Maybe another time," Harry hedged. He was unable to keep his eyes off the doll. "Is that what you do? Turn people into dolls?"

"They say they'll play, but then they're just sad," the Past said softly. "Sad and boring. Not many games in here – just memories."

"I have some questions." Harry forced himself to push on, because he really didn't have the time. He'd lost time with the Monster, too much time. "I want to know how the curse started."

* * *

Harry entered his room, feeling utterly numb, as the first rays of morning rose over Riddle Manor.

There was bile in his throat.

The Riddle had an unreadable expression on his face when he appeared, though his eyes were gleaming in comparison to Nameless, who had looked like he would prefer to murder him.

"So, now you know how this all started," the painting murmured. "Why it has to be this way."

"It doesn't have to be this way," Harry whispered. Riddle smiled, holding out a hand in a way rather reminiscent of his younger self.

"Come on through, Harry. Perhaps you'd like to play with me instead?"


	8. The Thorn and the Rose

It was a tragic story, really.

Tom Riddle, young and lonely. Tom Riddle, sixteen and arrogant, on the brink of immortality, as he turned his powers to the death of the only man Merope Gaunt had ever loved. 

Lord Voldemort, serpent-eyed and more arrogant still, disdainful of redemption. Lord Voldemort, who went so far as to split his own soul, wreak havoc on another world, miles away from the sleepy town of his conception. 

Merope Gaunt, the ghost on his shoulder, throbbing upon the black stone on his finger, wanting better for her son. 

Merope Gaunt, who even in death made a dreadful pact. Merope Gaunt, who cursed the son who turned out to be so much like the father he loathed, and yet offered the chance of being saved. 

Splitting the soul has terrible consequences, and death has a sense of humour when it comes to collecting payment – disliking men who thought themselves above their station. 

The only cure for such hate was love. And Merope had hoped – _believed_ – that somewhere, there would be one who could offer such a thing. So she locked the curse, and hid the key. And a selfish, lonely child made a game out of it.

Tom Riddle had been damned the second he went through with the acts to ensure his terrible immortality, but it was his mother who shaped the curse of immortality into something bound to be broken. Who took the shattered pieces of her son’s mutilated soul, and sculpted them into the forms they were now. 

All this, in the hope that a monster might find love. Love that would restore his soul, make him whole. 

Considering the casualties, Harry was finding it difficult to forgive even a mother’s care.

Whether he had to love Voldemort enough that the power of his feelings would heal a broken soul and restore a disconnected heart, or whether it was Voldemort who had to find somebody to care about … he didn’t know. But he couldn’t help but feel pessimistic either way – for the Nameless, at least, still thought him an idiot. 

But Hermione had said to confront the pieces…

Harry’s head hurt just thinking about it. 

Riddle’s room, his painting, looked exactly like the room Harry had just left. The same four-poster bed, the same handsome writing desk that Harry now knew must have belonged to the man’s father. 

The Riddle was still clutching onto his hand, his grip warm now that he had stepped into the portrait’s world. Harry found himself under a quiet sort of scrutiny, and swallowed. 

He had no idea what to do now. 

_To find an answer, one must know what to ask,_   
_And only then can you see behind the mask._

The problem was, he had no idea what to ask. 

The room was striking in its former glory; the garden outside was the picture of pride and splendour.

Harry was almost blinded by the light of the sun. Bright sunshine, like a heavenly radiance, more brilliant than anything Harry had ever seen before. His eyes squinted shut against the glare. He could feel the impossible warmth on his skin. He hadn’t known the sun could look like _that._

He swallowed uncertainly. 

_To find an answer, one must know what to ask,_   
_And only then can you see behind the mask._

It was referring to the Riddle, wasn’t it? 

“When are we?” he asked quietly. “This must be before the curse began.”

He really hoped that it didn’t count as a wrong question, something that would ‘get him sent back to his loved ones in a matchbox’. 

He glanced to the side, to see that the Riddle was studying him. 

“It is the day I murdered my father,” Riddle said. “The day that the curse began. It repeats every night now – it was nighttime, when I did it, you see.” 

“Is that why the Beast and the Monster switch by night and day?” They’d said … they’d said that the Monster was a monster because it was abominable, the worst of them all, and Harry had never received an answer on the man’s crimes… 

Had this been the crime? 

Not the first crime; judging by Past’s willingness to murder, he could imagine that Tom Riddle had been morally skewed for a very long time now … but the crime that mattered. 

The murder of Tom Riddle, Sr. 

The Riddle hummed. “Indeed,” he murmured.

Harry looked around the beautiful house with more trepidation now. Hadn’t there been mention of trials, confrontations? So how exactly did he confront the Riddle? 

And he still didn’t bloody well know what the all-important question was. 

“Come,” Riddle continued, offering him an arm. “Walk with me.” Harry hesitated a moment, before accepting and letting Riddle guide him out of the room. The rest of the house, too, was more immaculate than Harry had ever seen it. Airy and grand, with the windows thrown open to the world it later shunned.

He glanced behind him as they left, only to pause as his gaze fell upon where the Riddle’s portrait would be, if this was in his own room, outside of the painting. 

He nearly startled, insides dropping out at –

“You have a painting of me,” he said uneasily. Riddle gave him a smile – one that reminded him rather alarmingly of the Monster’s, if he was being perfectly honest. 

“Of course I do.” 

He was seemingly standing before the painting, not leaning on the frame or moving like Riddle’s painting did – he was frozen, one hand outstretched, as if still reaching to take Riddle’s hand and pass through. Frozen, and…

“I have strands of roses and thorns wrapped around my head.” 

“Yes.” The bastard had the audacity to seem amused by his reaction. 

“Are you going to explain that one _without_ another maddening riddle?” Harry demanded tightly. 

The Riddle considered him for a moment, head tilted to one side. He seemed to be in a peculiarly indulgent mood. Harry wondered if he should be suspicious. 

“What have you noticed about the paintings in the house?” Riddle asked. 

Harry furrowed his brow. “They change, seem alive … I can go in them …”

“And?”

Harry stared at the Riddle, trying to see what he was getting at. Was he just being really stupid and missing something obvious? He thought hard, eyes drifting back to the painting of him. 

“And … and …” He thought of how the Monster was a reflection of the Riddle, distorted. Of how Nameless looked like the Beast, but with his heart still in place. How the Past, too, looked like a normal version of the Prophecy. “You each have counterparts. You look like them, but … without any of the weird stuff.”

Riddle snorted. 

“Close enough. The paintings show … the truth of things. What we were before, one could say.” 

“The truth of things?” Harry looked again at the painting of him, at the thin trickle of blood on his cheek from where the thorns had cut into his forehead. He had a feeling that the Prophecy, or someone, had a very sick sense of humour if they were painting him with a crown of rose thorns on his head. “That’s not very reassuring.” 

He half wanted to lift a hand to his hair, just to check that everything was as it should be. 

“It’s not supposed to be reassuring; it’s the way it is,” the Riddle replied. 

“But this is inverted. That picture of me is not there in my … in the real world.” 

“The real world.” Riddle’s lips twisted. 

“Yes,” Harry snapped. “The real world. Not a painting.” He was not going to let Riddle make this even more confusing than it already was with some existential bullshit. “Stop dodging.”

Riddle’s hand squeezed into his arm where he still clutched it. 

“There are many planes to the world, _Harry_.” The name seemed to quiver through his very soul. “This is simply another one of them. If you look normal in ‘the real world’, as you call it, where the rest of us are strange and distorted … it would stand to reason, through the inversion you have already identified, that this is the you which has the ‘weird stuff’. 

“This is the effect our curse has on you – the form you are beginning to take. It is a painting of the Offering.” 

Harry’s stomach turned. 

“And here was me thinking that there could be _one_ room in this place which wasn’t horribly creepy,” he muttered, scowling when the Riddle burst out laughing. 

“Come along. You’ll want to leave this painting before nightfall, lest you inadvertently come to be trespassing on the realm of You-Know-Who.”

Harry allowed himself to be towed along, thoughts racing. 

“If all the paintings switch during the day and the night … what is the Past? You – well, the Monster and Hermione said that there were six pieces of you.” But Hermione had also said that something seemed to be missing, even from the whole. “And what about all the destroyed paintings, in the rest of the house?”

Merope had thrown away the key to the curse. Banished it from the Riddle House, to the outside world. Or was it still here, in the Past’s painting? The Past had said that Harry needed both past and future to see clearly; if anything hovered between those, it would be found there, in the painting’s nebulous landscapes. 

“Eurydice.” 

“So … there aren’t only six of you?” Had the Monster been lying? It hardly seemed fair to add lies to already so bewildering a series of truths. 

“Eurydice is not one of us.” 

“So who’s Eurydice?” Hermione had said to beware Eurydice…

“Do you know the story?”

“What?” 

Riddle sighed heavily, sounding far too long-suffering considering _he_ wasn’t the one trying to figure out this insanity. 

“Eurydice and Orpheus. It’s a Greek myth. Eurydice was the wife of Orpheus. Long story short, they were madly in love, she died, he went to rescue her from the Underworld. Doesn’t this all sound so quaint and familiar?”

It took Harry a few seconds to figure out what Riddle might be referring to, however loosely.

“Is this some obscure comment on how I volunteered to take Gin- _her_ place?” They were all obsessed! 

Riddle merely smiled at him. And not exactly a nice smile – but maybe he was too used to seeing the Monster’s teeth in that mouth. 

“Orpheus was allowed to bring his beloved out of the Underworld, on the stipulation that he not look back at her when he was leaving. If he did – and he did – then the story goes that either she vanished back into the Underworld, or they both turned straight to stone. Trapped and together, forever. 

“I personally prefer the second version. So much more … hmm … _touching_ ,” Riddle pronounced lightly. 

“Right,” Harry said. “And the reason you have a picture of Eurydice in your house?” 

“Do you remember when I told you the rules of the house?” 

“Don’t … name the nameless, don’t disrespect the house or the paintings … don’t … look back if I’m given the opportunity to leave.” Harry’s heart was hammering in his chest. “Will I be given the opportunity to leave?” 

“There are many moves of this game you could make,” the Riddle said noncommittally. “It is possible that, in certain circumstances, that might be one of them.”

For the first time, Harry felt a surge of hope. It deflated quickly. 

“… and the catch? You wouldn’t just _let_ me leave.”

Hermione must have said to beware Eurydice for a reason, after all. Though she had also said to beware the Kisses Cursed, and he was doing just fantastic on that count, wasn’t he, considering his deal with the Monster? 

“The world is a strange and mysterious place,” Riddle said dryly. Harry huffed. 

They were in the dining room, and the Riddle paused again, tone more sombre now. “This is where I did it. My father, my grandparents. They were eating dinner at the time.”

“Is that why the Beast is so obsessed with me attending dinner?” 

“It might have something to do with his fixation on the matter, yes.”

“So you killed them at six o’clock.” 

“No, dinner started at six. The curse started at precisely midnight.”

“So … you killed them at midnight?”

“The kill was the catalyst, not the beginning. The kill created the Monster. You might have noticed that you have also met the Beast, and various other ‘pieces’.” 

It was fascinating, it really was. But it still wasn’t helping Harry figure out that all-important question.

The dining room looked far too harmless for so horrendous a crime as patricide and splitting one's soul. It made Harry feel a bit nauseous about the fact he’d been sitting there eating every day, actually. 

It was bathed in the same warm sunshine as the upstairs bedroom had been. The light brought a certain beauty to the room, faded as it normally was by the hungry darkness that smothered everything as Harry knew it. 

They stood in silence, their elbows brushing. 

“Why did you do it?”

Riddle glanced at him, seeming absurdly surprised that he even bothered to ask. 

“I … You can imagine, from the fact that the Past resides in Wool’s Orphanage, that I did not grow up with my parents,” the other said. Harry could feel an ache in his chest at the thought of where this was going. Especially considering he now knew Merope Gaunt to be dead as well. “I hated it there. My mother was a witch, as you can no doubt guess from her invocation of this curse.”

“And your father?” There was a bad taste in Harry’s mouth.

“My father abandoned her, and me, when he found out what she was.” The sudden fury in the Riddle’s eyes darkened them to almost match the Monster’s. “And yet –” Riddle laughed, this time with a scorn that raked like nails along Harry’s spine. “She was still foolishly in love with him.”

“Is that why the Beast thinks love is foolish?” 

“Love _is_ foolish, much as any of us are loathe to agree with each other about anything.” 

Well, didn’t that just make this curse so much easier to break. Really, he was starting to think Merope had been a blind, bleeding optimist, because it seemed inconceivable that anyone could love a beast, let alone a monster. 

Death had to be laughing somewhere.

“And you killed him because he abandoned you.” 

“He deserved it,” Riddle stated, grim satisfaction etched on his face. Maybe that was true, but Harry’s fists clenched at his sides. 

“And what,” he began, his own eyes darkening too, “of all the families you have shattered since this curse started?” The Riddle opened his mouth to speak, but Harry cut over him ruthlessly. “What of all the people you condemned to be as lonely and scared as you once were? Did they deserve this?” Had _he_ done something to deserve it? No.

He’d been one when he lost his parents – James first, his mother the year after. 

Riddle stared at him, eyes flickering. “None of us chose this.” 

“You demand your offerings.” 

“Offerings are the only way of breaking the curse.”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to bloody well kill them, do you?” Harry spat. Riddle’s eyes narrowed, and a shadow seemed to descend across the room, darkness blotting out the sun in a horribly familiar way. He held his ground, because he’d been putting up with this for who knew how long now, and eventually it was bound to burst out.

“No, but it makes it easier,” the Riddle replied coldly, taking a step forward, crowding his space until Harry’s back was pressed against the dining room table. “The Beast needs hearts to be in anything but utter agony because of the gaping hole in his chest, and to keep the clock from stopping before the requirements of the curse are fulfilled. The Monster needs souls and emotions to be able to manifest any type of physical form at all and to not be tormented by absolute nothingness. 

“It’s a constant hunger, and once a year really isn’t enough. You should be grateful that we don’t descend upon your _insignificant_ little village and raze it to the ground.”

Harry’s breath caught in his chest. 

“That doesn’t make it right.” 

But that didn’t mean he didn’t, regrettably, understand. 

Riddle’s hands pressed with slow deliberation on either side of him, into the table, caging him to the spot. Harry’s shoulders squared, but he refused to recoil, even when the man’s mouth hovered inches away from his.

“No,” the Riddle agreed. “But this not about wrong and right. It is love, and war. Dark and light. Everything in between.”

Harry did note, for the first time in a while, that Tom Riddle had once been very handsome. Not that physical attractiveness mattered now. 

“And you?” he dared instead. “How do you kill your offerings?”

He had no doubt that the painting did. The ones that the village got back, mutilated or husked, were common, and he knew them to be the work of the Beast or the Monster. But there were still those who never returned at all. 

His mother, who became a doll in Past’s painting, for example.

Riddle’s thumb caressed the side of his cheek with deceptive tenderness. 

“You can guess the pattern, no doubt …”

“The Monster is your counterpart,” Harry said hoarsely. That was probably the reason that the Riddle got along with the creature, even when nobody else did.

Riddle’s knee braced between his thighs, and Harry seriously considered shoving him, hard. Because for all the similarities in appearance, the Riddle wasn’t shadow and smoke like the Monster. 

“Quite,” Riddle agreed, breath ghosting over his lips. 

Harry remembered abruptly that the Past had tried to kill him too. He pressed a hand over Riddle’s mouth, just in case. His own felt unbearably dry.

But though the Riddle obviously veered down the emotional path in murder, he didn’t do it the same way the Monster did, did he? 

If Riddle wanted to speak, he would have to take a step back from where Harry’s hand was clamped over his mouth. Harry was not the weak one here; he had his own advantages. He hadn’t gone into this to be a victim, and he refused to become one now. 

“You’re not going to kill me, Tom,” he said anyway. To be safe. Riddle raised his brows, but stepped back after a moment. 

“Ooh, it gives me shivers when you use my name … like somebody’s walked over my grave.”

Definitely the Monster’s counterpart. Riddle gave him a mocking smile, like he knew what Harry was thinking. 

He wondered if this was somehow his test. 

It seemed too easy. 

_But offering be wary, these things come with a fine,_   
_Though kisses exchanged can be done by the time._

Hermione had said there were prices to be paid for every move in this game. 

“You already know, as the Monster said, that the two of us don’t kill people –”

“Yes, you drain them, which is _so_ much better,” Harry snapped. 

They watched each other quietly, as the room gradually turned back to sunshine and daylight, as it had been before. 

“The death my father received was, ultimately, quick and painless. But I wished then that I could have drained him. Left him empty, picked through his mind to see why he did it. Another part wished that they could have torn him to shreds, to impart even a moment of the pain we felt in return.” Riddle’s tone was soft again, strangely even.

Well, that explained some things, certainly, on kill choices. And he could now make guesses on what some of the parts, at least, were missing. 

The Beast wanted a heart. The Monster wanted a soul. The Past wanted a friend; the Prophecy, a future. He wasn’t sure what the Riddle or the Nameless wanted. Unless, of course, the Nameless wanted a name – but he’d been warned all too often against the dangers of that.

As for questions and answers … there were too many riddles in this house for him to be able to easily figure out this one. 

He could assume, though, that if he’d stepped into these things in the wrong combination thus far, then he would already be dead. That was something.

Harry swallowed. 

“I’ve been led to believe,” he began carefully, “that each of you wants something different from their offering. Hearts … souls … What do you want?” 

Riddle’s mouth curled. 

“Isn’t it obvious? I am a being of questions and answers. I want your mind. Your thoughts.” 

“Well, the lot of you are definitely all I’ve been thinking of recently, if that counts for anything,” Harry tried. The Riddle laughed again, swooping close to him in an instant. He didn’t flicker, appearing and disappearing like the Monster did, but he was fast. 

“Isn’t that how you love someone, Harry?” the damned creature whispered to him. “Mind, body, and soul?” 

“I think it depends on the kind of love. I’m no expert.” He refused to be fazed, even if it suddenly felt like his pulse might jump right out of his skin. This time, the Riddle’s hand pressed into his hip, long fingers curling beneath the material of his shirt, stroking slowly along all the bumps of his ribs. “Though,” he added pointedly, “what does feeling me up have anything to do with my mind?”

“The brain is made up of nerves, and reacts to stimuli that are very physical.” Riddle held his gaze. “It pertains to your mind when I can see the way the brush of my hands makes your eyes widen and feel the goosebumps rising along your skin. It’s fascinating. You have such an expressive face.”

He refused to be flustered. _He refused to be –_

“And now you’re blushing.” Damn it. Harry snarled and slapped the infernal bastard’s hand away from him. 

This wasn’t helping anything. He wasn’t progressing, he was going around in circles. Admittedly, sporadically informative circles, but circles nonetheless.

“You are such a twat.” It was utterly ineloquent, but he felt it expressed his sentiments clearly. 

“And yet you’re blushing.”

“I am not blushing!”

“Do you get this flustered when anyone gets close to you, or am I a special case?” The hands didn’t reach out to touch again, but they were so close that it felt like they could have been. Harry could feel the warmth of it, smell something sharp like acrylic. 

He shot Riddle a glare, breath caught somewhere in his throat. Riddle’s fanned over his cheek, as he loomed over him. 

Harry jutted his chin up. “Considering the off chance that you might try and kill me any second, I’d say it’s less that I’m flustered, and more … self-preservation.”

“Because you have so much self-preservation," Riddle scoffed. "You volunteered for this. You complain that you didn’t pick this, but you picked this more than I did, _Harry_.” 

He hated it when Riddle said his name. He was starting to get why he should be careful with names – because it wasn’t just a word anymore, it was like his very soul was being addressed. Quivering, resonating through his bones, like he’d been stripped of all defenses and was instead left bare – exposed to an almost visceral scrutiny. 

“I didn’t think I was signing myself up for _this_.”

Riddle’s eyes were narrowed now.

“No, you thought you were signing yourself up for an expedient stay of execution.” 

There was no good way to reply to that, or so it seemed. Harry turned his gaze away. 

“Should I assume you can’t tell me what I need to do to unlock the next step?”

“To find an answer, one must –”

“I know that one already.” Harry interrupted the familiar sing-song lilt with a scowl. “Seriously, the lot of you are the most unhelpful beings that I have ever met. One would almost think you didn’t want this curse broken at all.”

“What do you imagine your next step is, after this?”

“I – what?” Harry blinked. 

“Where do you want to get to? Who do you want to unlock, so to speak?”

“Obviously, whoever’s next that I’m supposed to.”

“And who do you imagine that is?” Riddle raised his brow. “Nameless? Prophecy? You have a brain somewhere in that bird’s nest, I’m certain of it.”

Harry concentrated on thinking, instead of scowling. 

_If one is first, then his twin is last_ – Past had been first, so he could at least establish that the Prophecy was last, considering – by appearance at least – they were paired.

So … Past, then Riddle. Then Prophecy last. That left the Nameless, the Beast, and the Monster. Though he wasn’t even sure if the Beast and the Monster counted in the same way, considering they were not paintings and he could talk to them night and day without trouble. It was _not_ talking to them that was the difficult part.

He could feel the Riddle watching him still. It was annoyingly distracting. 

Well, if ‘to find an answer, one must know what to ask’ meant Riddle, then ‘only then can you see behind the mask’ obviously referred to whoever was next. So who was most like a mask?

The Beast, because he didn’t want to be seen? Nameless, whose name was a supposed mystery that couldn’t be spoken?

He didn’t think it was the Monster. If anything, the Monster was the most direct out of all of them. He definitely wasn’t ‘seeing behind the mask’. So, Beast or Nameless?

Of course, he could just ask the Monster what he was supposed to do – but he wasn’t sure how much he had left to bargain, considering all that he’d already promised, and it probably wouldn’t count as beating the Riddle’s trial, anyway. 

He did have all the things of his past still remaining to him: his first love, the first time he ever saw his parents’ faces, the last memory he ever had of Ginny, and whatever else the Monster might be curious about. He just … didn’t want to give those things up.

But what question would he ask about the Beast or the Monster? He had more than enough curiosity about both, but if there was some magical question then he didn’t know. Surely the question was something that might be about the Riddle? If he was the one he was supposed to be confronting? 

Harry had no idea. 

He was getting really sick of having no idea. Whoever decided that he was ‘the chosen one’, or whatever moniker he was supposed to be using nowadays, was clearly delusional. 

Him and Tom Riddle? What basis could they possibly have for _any_ meaningful connection, let alone true love? It wasn’t like he had time for a chat about life ideologies when he was too busy trying not to damn well die.

Merope Gaunt was insane. 

A thought struck him. 

“Wait … you said Nameless or Prophecy. Does that mean it’s not the Beast or the Monster?”

Riddle gave him a look. Harry grinned. 

_Nameless._

“What do you call the Nameless?” he murmured softly to himself. “You never did answer that one, Tom.” 

Riddle smirked.

* * *

The Beast did a double take when he saw him.

“What were you thinking?” Voldemort hissed, starting to rise from where he’d been sitting, apparently already waiting for once. Harry suddenly realized he hadn’t turned up for breakfast. He’d been so busy with everything else. His stomach was howling out in protest. “Foolish child.”

Harry shook his head. “Should I assume this is to do with the Monster?” 

It seemed like years ago that he’d made his deal, even if it was only the night before.

Fingers gripped his chin tightly, examining him as he sat down. 

God, he was too tired for this. It wasn’t enough to be living with one madman, oh no – there had to be bloody six of them. Harry repressed a sigh, especially at the thought that his sleep tonight would probably be minimal, to say the least.

At least he’d made some progress. Or, he would find out tonight if it had been the right question. He’d gotten out of Riddle’s painting alive, anyway.

“Of course it’s to do with the abomination,” Voldemort said. “I know you’re not an idiot, though I admit I’m at a loss as to what could possibly compel you to make so stupid a deal with that – that thing!”

“Come now, Voldemort.” He helped himself to some chicken. “He’s not that bad.” 

The Beast gave him a dark look. Harry suppressed a vindictive grin. He knew that it did no good for him that all of the pieces were so irrationally possessive of ‘their offering’, but he couldn’t help but play with their obvious dislike for each other. Just sometimes. 

“He is the worst person you will ever meet.”

“Wow, you really don’t like yourself very much,” Harry remarked. A knife went hurtling just past his head, and he stiffened, abruptly looking up again. 

Apparently that comment had gone too far. 

Voldemort’s lips were pinched thin. “I do not know what type of endgame you are aiming for here, but I assure you that the Prophecy –”

“Oh, what’s he going to do, whine because he lost his toys? So long as nobody unchains him, the rest of us are all fine. Go back to playing babysitter, Beast.” 

Harry’s head whipped around and – and Riddle sauntered in and – how? It – it was definitely Riddle, and not the Monster, and how the hell was this happening and –

_But most of all be cautious in closing the door_   
_Everybody knows that roses have thorns._

Oh shit, what had he done?


	9. The Kisses Cursed

The reaction was instant, and startling. 

One second, Harry was staring in horror and wondering what the hell he had done wrong. The next, he’d grunted with pain as his back hit the dining room table and the Beast’s hand splayed across his chest to keep him in place. 

The two pieces stared at each other. Voldemort was radiating fury, while Riddle was simply smiling – as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary was going on.

“You should not be here,” the Beast snarled. 

Riddle merely raised a brow, his smile brightening. “And yet, here I am.”

“How?” Harry just barely managed to voice the question. He straightened, recovering from his shock, only for Voldemort’s grip to dig even harder into his skin. A warning to stay put. He dismissed it, batting the Beast’s hand away, only for his arm to be gripped tightly and twisted. 

Something flickered in Riddle’s eyes at the not-exactly-gentle treatment. 

“Doors are not one way, Harry,” he murmured. “You know this. Once you have ‘unlocked a painting’, as you call it, there is the potential for it to open both ways, as the curse begins to weaken.”

Harry jumped on that. “The curse is weakening, then?” 

_Not the shadow, but the clock. Not the curse, but the lock._

Surely this was good? Unless, of course, it was the darkness-spreading-and-consuming-everything type of broken lock. He felt a stir of unease in his belly.

“You’re doing very well, Harry,” Riddle replied, taking a step closer. Voldemort immediately took a step forward too, as if physically shielding him from the other. As if he was any safer with the Beast instead…

“You’re not doing remotely well, if he is free,” Voldemort said just as quickly. Harry looked between them, arm still held in an unforgiving grip, trying to decide which of those was more likely to be true. 

He was yanked even closer to the Beast, his nose alarmingly near the gaping hole of the rose. The flower looked more withered than it had ever been – significantly more so than the day before. 

Harry swallowed, then clenched his jaw.

“See, if you’re going to talk to me, you should probably actually talk _to_ me, instead of making jabs at each other _through_ me,” he snapped. That caused them both to actually look at him, instead of just staring at each other like wild creatures sizing up their prey. “There we go. Now …” He concentrated on keeping himself calm, despite the heaviness of his breathing. “What’s all this about endgames and the Prophecy?”

He still hadn’t worked out which piece was rooting for which option – darkness, cure, or just his death generally. 

“You know the Prophecy’s endgame already,” Riddle prompted. 

“He wants the curse to break, but in the case of darkness spreading, he wants me to take his place as the mainframe,” Harry recited dully. 

“Indeed.” Riddle took another step forward, heedless of the look on the Beast’s face, gaze fixed on him. “He also controls the paintings and the house. As you know.”

The house was trembling ominously around them, doors slamming shut and open again. 

“He let you out. Why?”

Well, at least that meant it wasn’t entirely Harry’s fuck-up.

“Did you imagine you are the only person in this house who makes deals?” The Beast's tone was laced with utter contempt. “The Monster is growing too powerful. He needs to be neutralized. Your stupid decision to give up the future verges on a sacrifice of your prophesied ability to break the curse. A Prophecy relies on the future, and you already promised the Monster yours.”

Harry had never thought of it like that before. His insides jumped. He stared at Riddle. 

“And you’re the Monster’s counterpart.” His mouth had gone dry. “What was the deal?”

“What do you imagine the deal was?” Voldemort snapped, grabbing hold of him and once again yanking him back. “The one thing everyone in this house wants is you.” 

Harry’s ears were abruptly ringing. It felt like the whole world had been submerged underwater. 

“I … don’t understand.”

“I don’t like sharing.” Riddle shrugged. “And if you’re trapped, chained to the wall for all eternity, someone might as well get to do what they want with you. _He’d_ –” Riddle gave Voldemort a dark look – “just waste you in death and body parts.” 

Harry felt sick. 

“I’m pretty sure the lot of you can’t make deals about _my_ future,” he bit out. “How exactly does any of this neutralize the Monster?”

“Oh, it doesn’t.” Riddle smiled pleasantly. “But what I can do might. Everything has a flipside, after all.” The Riddle took another step forward, and the Beast’s grip tightened on him all over again, body shifting as if to hide him from view. “Now, give him to me, Beast. You know this is necessary. You’re not going to go against the Prophecy’s orders, are you?” 

Harry’s heart was hammering faster and faster, and the grip on his arm was definitely painful now. 

“What’s the flipside?” he demanded, mouth dry. 

There was no answer. The two just stared at each other. Suddenly, Harry wasn’t sure he wanted Voldemort to step aside and let the Riddle have him – however human he was. He knew that the Beast, as a rule, didn’t take that which wasn’t offered to him, if a rule wasn’t broken. 

“Why would you want to stop the Monster? You’re the only one who seems to be on his side.”

Outside of the confines of the painting, he had no idea what the Riddle was capable of. And whilst he wouldn’t trust the Monster, wouldn’t be so stupid, that didn’t mean he necessarily thought it was a good idea if it was neutralized either. That might swing power too much to the Prophecy…

But could the curse not be broken currently? The Riddle had said it was being weakened. Maybe the Prophecy could only let the Riddle out once Harry had already left the door open.

There was something very suspicious going on here.

“Tell me what the flipside is,” he ordered. “You’re still the Riddle. You still need to answer my questions. All games come with an instruction manual.” 

“What is a counterpart, Harry? If we are doubles of each other … what does that mean?” 

Harry glanced at the Beast, and then back at the Riddle again.

“That you’re part of the same? A pair?” 

“And what precisely have you observed about the pairs in this house?” There was a smile on the Riddle’s face, and the Beast drew him back even closer. “You’ve noticed this, I know. _Think_.”

“You switch,” Harry said slowly. “At first I thought the Beast and the Monster were a pair, and that they switch at dawn and dusk, because to some extent they do … but even if it is day and night, it’s not them that’s switching physical forms. At least not with each other. You …” oh _god_. “You _are_ the Monster. At night, you come out of the painting and become him, as the Beast is drawn into the painting and becomes the –” Voldemort squeezed his shoulder. “Becomes _him_ ,” Harry amended. “But … if you’re already out …”

What did that mean for the Monster? If the pattern of transformation was broken? Harry yanked away from the Beast more violently this time, surprised by the hammering of his own heart as he took a step forward until he was toe-to-toe with Riddle. “Where is he? What have you done to him?”

He had a strange feeling in his gut. 

“He is in the painting.” 

Harry’s brow furrowed. 

“And … what happens when it becomes night?” 

This time, it was the Beast that spoke.

“Then he’s trespassing on the Nameless.”

And Riddle had the worst smile Harry had ever seen.

* * *

Harry came to a panting stop before the Riddle’s portrait. It would be night soon, and while Harry didn’t know precisely what would happen then, he strongly suspected it might not be good. 

Moreover, whilst he didn’t know much about this curse – though maybe he was starting to – he was pretty sure he couldn’t slot the puzzle together without all the pieces functioning.

He swallowed thickly. 

The Monster was in the frame of the photo, straining against the thorny vines of the roses that had wrapped around his limbs. Their gazes locked. 

“Are you just going to stand there?” Dark eyes flashed. “Do something! You’re my offering, aren’t you?”

For all the scathing in the Monster’s tone, if Harry wasn’t entirely mistaken, there might have been just the tiniest hint of fear. A vicious, wild fear that attacked instead of cowered, but fear nonetheless. 

What did it mean about the Nameless, if even the Monster was scared of him? 

Harry took a step forward, and the room gave an ominous rattle around him. 

“He might not let you out, you know,” Riddle said casually.

The Beast spoke simultaneously. “If you take another step, I will tear your legs off.” 

Harry froze, glancing behind him. His fists clenched at his sides. 

“You can’t come into this room!” That was how it worked, wasn’t it?

“The Prophecy has protected you thus far,” the Monster sneered. “But haven’t you ever noticed that children throw temper tantrums when the game isn’t going their way?”

This couldn’t be happening. It just couldn’t. He glanced at the window, wild-eyed. From what little he could see of the watered-down sunlight, it was slipping away. The darkness was winding tighter and tighter around them. 

Suddenly, their jealousy for each other seemed a lot less amusing. 

His blood was pounding through his head, fear souring his mouth.

“Because I can’t give you my future if I give it to him?” Harry was trying not to despair. Really. “I can’t break the curse and fulfil the prophecy without all of the pieces, either.” 

“We warned you about picking sides,” the Beast said. “If you choose that abomination again, I shall react accordingly. If this curse is not to be broken, I should have the heart of the offering to sustain me.” 

The sun sank lower in the sky. 

Despite the circumstances, he felt abruptly calm. Something must have shifted in his expression, because the Riddle’s head tilted with interest and Voldemort stiffened. 

“Haven’t you guys got it yet?” Harry almost wanted to laugh. “I am the Offering. I volunteered. I _chose_ this. And nobody gets to decide my future except _me_ , least of all some panicking child with too much power in his hands.” 

And he leapt through the Riddle’s painting as they lunged at him.

* * *

For a moment, Harry was terrified that the Riddle and Voldemort would jump in after them – but even now, Harry suspected there were things beyond even the Prophecy’s power keeping them at bay. 

He doubted the Beast could enter the same frame that Nameless would soon occupy. The whole point behind this mess was that they shifted. And the Riddle couldn’t enter, because the Monster was already there. 

“Untie me, quick!” the Monster hissed. “Then we can get out of here.”

“How do I know you’re not –”

_“You have thirty seconds until sundown!”_ The Monster sounded absolutely frantic, livid. “Harry Potter, you will untie me this second!”

What the hell did the bastard want him to do – rip the damned thorns off with his bare hands? He nonetheless moved forward automatically, dropping to his knees. 

The second he touched the thorns, they went for him in turn. 

“Hurry up!” The Monster’s teeth were bared. 

“I’m going as fast as I can, you git,” Harry snapped back, kicking one of the blasted things away and trying to crush yet another. “Be grateful I’m trying to help you at all.” The devil knew, the lot of them were the most unhelpful beings he’d ever met. He’d said it once, he would probably say it again. 

The thorns stung his fingers, cutting them open, but he managed to get one of the Monster’s wrists free.

The second after that, the sun set.

* * *

It was dark. So dark that Harry couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. An impossible, _hungry_ sort of darkness. 

He had no chance of seeing the Monster, which was frankly unnerving considering he was hardly the safe sort to be around. At least he figured the creature wouldn’t immediately kill him, especially after Harry had just come to its aid. 

There was no sign of the Nameless yet. 

“Let’s get –” he began. A hand clamped tightly on his mouth. 

“Shut up,” the Monster hissed in his ear. “He’ll hear you. Hold very still. And for the love of god, don’t let him see you. Don’t make eye contact.” 

Harry’s eyes widened, nausea bubbling in his throat. His vision strained in the darkness. He could feel the roses and vines squirming around his legs, as if they were searching the darkness too. 

And … oh god. 

In the blackness, standing before the painting, those eyes were the only thing he could see. Flaming, bloody red orbs that roved across the room. 

No. 

Not roving. 

Those eyes were unseeing. 

The Monster’s grip pressed harder against his mouth. 

Harry was convinced that Nameless would be able to hear his heart. That anybody could. He could barely breathe, and hardly dared to, the sound of it muffled beneath the Monster’s hold. 

He tried to think on what they should do. There had to be something they could do. That he could do. 

Maybe the Nameless wouldn’t attack him; it had seemed amused by him. 

But he had a sinking feeling it would definitely go for the Monster – the two hated each other. 

He wanted to shut his eyes, but didn’t dare take them off the Nameless for a second. 

He saw the Riddle come to a stop before the other side of the painting. That side was in darkness too, but it was the normal darkness that Harry had grown used to. 

The thorns and roses continued to slide over his body, like snakes waiting for one small twitch to lunge. They tore at his trousers and snagged his t-shirt, leaving thin wounds dragging sharp along his thighs, across his neck. 

Were they supposed to just sit here all night? 

“I can smell your blood, offering.” It was Voldemort’s voice, high and cold. Such a conversational tone. Harry felt the Monster stiffen against his back. “It is … pleasing, to finally meet you in person.” 

The Monster’s nails dug in, as if to warn him not to even try speaking. Harry half felt he should anyway … but at the same time, he was convinced that the Nameless would track him by the sound. 

“He’s mine,” Riddle said from the other side. “Don’t touch the boy. The Prophecy promised him to me.” 

“And you are a fool for believing a child’s promises. Idiots, the lot of you, hung up on childhood and childish things. Hearts, _love_ , it’s all so … quaint. So very human of them, isn’t it, offering?” 

The Nameless’ eyes swept over the room again. Harry felt clammy. 

“But then,” it continued, “I do not view kindly those who trespass on my domain. Nor those who choose to help my enemies.”

Bloody Monster. Harry blamed him. 

He was trying rather hard not to shiver too, with half his clothes in tatters around him from the thorns that finally seemed to have judged him uninteresting and moved on in search of other areas of the room. Not that Harry could tell where anything was right now. 

“The Prophecy will not be happy with you if you kill our offering,” Riddle said. 

In the darkness, it was impossible to tell if the Nameless’ expression changed, especially when he was facing away from whatever thin, muted light shone through the painting. 

“The Prophecy cannot do much about that if he remains in chains,” the Nameless said, uncaring. “I would not give up my immortality for him, nor for the boy.” 

Red eyes scoured the room again. “You’re being dreadfully quiet, offering. Has the Monster smothered you? You normally never shut up, so I’m sure you can understand my concern. Are you scared?” 

The red eyes were closer now, and there was the sound of measured footsteps circling the room. Harry wondered if they could make a break for the painting – though that would just lead them to Riddle. 

Harry didn’t want to even try thinking of the specifics of where each piece went when its counterpart was in control. The curse must be weakened at least a little bit to allow for this fluidity. 

His fists clenched white-knuckled at his sides. Suddenly, he felt the brush of the Monster’s lips against his neck in the darkness, and nearly choked. 

“Monster, too … darkness is your domain. Why are you hiding? Does it frighten you to return to this level, after you scraped _so hard_ for your physical form? How many souls did you steal from people for that?”

Obviously, if the Monster fed, it could gain greater power. Except … well, their deal determined that the Monster couldn’t feed on anything Harry didn’t have, that wasn’t new. Which, in this situation, wasn’t that much help. 

Harry would rather not be sucked dry for the purposes of the Monster’s escape, though.

The Nameless laughed, high and cold, at their continued silence. 

Harry considered his options, thoughts racing. 

It would have been a lot easier to form a counterattack if he could see.

He slowly, so slowly, let his fingers stretch, groping along the floor, over the furniture, searching for something that he could throw. Hoping to god that he didn’t make something clatter and hit the floor. 

From when he’d been in here with Riddle, and from his own room, he could guess that this was an exact mirror image of the house. So surely, some of the same things would be there? The same layout? 

“Oh, come now, do you not have any of your endless questions for me? You don’t normally hold back, offering. Don’t you want to know why it’s dark? Don’t you want to know what is happening in this house, if the Riddle is murdering our dear father…?”

Perhaps something on the writing desk? Harry had seen a small letter-opener there once. 

Every muscle in his body was tensed. 

The second after that, the Monster had pressed it into his hands. 

His first thought was the annoyance-relief that the Monster was still poking about in his head. The second was the realization that the Monster could see. 

It was a creature of darkness! Of course these shadows didn’t impair its vision! 

He turned his head slightly to try and assess exactly how the Monster knew what he was thinking, and imagined throwing the letter opener hard towards the door. 

Nothing. 

Right. Riddle did thoughts – the Monster did memories, emotions. 

From what he’d gathered, unless it was straight-up knowledge like Harry’s name, the creature devoured through its mouth. Or maybe that was a personal preference and he was simply looking for an excuse to kiss ‘his offering’. Harry didn’t know. 

But with his eyes locked on the Nameless, he dragged his mouth along the Monster’s neck. Cheek. Jaw? Harry honestly didn’t know. He felt lightheaded, determined despite his fear, just like before. 

Obviously, the Monster couldn’t feed on things he’d done before now, so it should be safe enough. Theoretically. 

He’d thrown things plenty of times in his life. All he needed was to get his idea across, and hopefully, the other’s cleverness would work in his favour for once. 

The Monster’s fingers slid ever so slowly around his wrist. 

The Nameless was getting closer now, with a delicate sniff as he tracked the room. 

_“Don’t you want to know my name?”_

They threw hard. 

The Nameless’ red eyes disappeared as his head turned towards the clatter. It made it impossible to see him at all. 

Harry held his breath. 

The sound of footsteps started again, further away this time. 

He shifted towards the light of the painting, only for the Monster’s grip to tighten on him. Lips pressed against his ear, voice barely audible. 

“We can’t get out that way. You haven’t unlocked him. The door isn’t open.” 

What the hell were they supposed to do then?! 

The Monster pulled him in another direction, towards where they’d thrown the letter opener. Towards You-Know-Who.

“Why are we –” Harry began, voice not even a mutter, before realization struck. 

If this house was a distorted replica of the one outside the painting … then there was more than one. 

He hadn’t unlocked the Nameless, but he had unlocked the Past.

* * *

It was slow going.

Harry was, frankly, uneasy about relying on the Monster in any capacity – and the only reason he believed the creature wasn’t leading him into a trap was because the Monster was actually more desperate to get out of there than he was. 

And, as Harry had made sure to point out, the Past liked the Monster about as much as everyone else in this house did. Which, on the whole, was not very much at all. 

Harry, on the other hand, could (hopefully) get them passage. 

He had no idea if the Nameless was close or not. He could only see him at all when he caught the swing of that scarlet scrutiny. 

Still, the questions were bubbling rather frantically now, even with the Monster’s arms wrapped around him, guiding him in his complete blindness. 

“What has he done that is so bad that even you, the Monster, are scared of him?” he whispered. 

“I’m not scared of him.” The Monster jabbed his side, and Harry nearly snarled. 

A minute stretched in taut silence, then two. 

“I … am a Monster. The Monster. I am the manifestation of murder and revenge. I, who killed my own family – and many others – long before I ever became this.” The Monster’s voice was, for once, serious. Without that crooning lilt. Even if that snake-tongue did flicker unnervingly against Harry’s cheek. 

“He – he is the one whose name people fear to speak at all,” the Monster said. “He is the one who split his soul for never-ending life. That’s why the Beast is missing his heart.”

Harry smiled mirthlessly.

“And the eyes are the windows to the soul, which is why his eyes are …” Not functioning. Unable to see. Stained red by violence. 

“Precisely. You might actually be getting the hang of this.” 

Another thought was beginning to grow in Harry’s mind. The Beast didn’t guard the left side of his house for no reason. There was a reason people died trying to get there. 

“The Past’s portrait is there at night. Except the Past is already the Prophecy’s counterpart. Past and Future. But you all switch, day and night. ‘Beware the war when shadow meets light’ …” Harry’s mouth felt dry. “So if the Past is not there during the day …”

_“Harry.”_

“It’s Eurydice, isn’t it? Not one of you … but nonetheless.” 

The silence told him all he needed to know, and Harry gave a grim smile. 

Of course, this whole situation still confused him literally half to death, but he liked to think it was getting clearer. More slowly than he would have liked, though. 

It was still an overwhelming relief when the Past’s portrait finally came into view, a light against the overwhelming darkness. Even the Monster seemed relieved, as much as it ever was, grip loosening upon him fractionally. 

Harry stopped being relieved when he saw just how frightened the little boy looked. 

“It’s alright,” he hastened to say. “The Monster won’t hurt you. I won’t let him. Besides, if you would just let us throu–”

Red eyes snapped open in the shadows. 

This time, they were looking right at him, and the man stepped into the light cast by Past’s portrait. The small boy shifted miserably. 

“I’m sorry, Harry,” he whispered. 

“First you enter my domain without permission, and now you try and leave without even saying hello? You should show some respect, offering,” Nameless murmured.

He didn’t even have time to rasp out a ‘hello’ before the other lunged. 

He felt the Monster’s tendrils cover him with a possessive protectiveness, yanking him back, only for lips to crush hard against his own. 

The second after that, all he knew was pain.


	10. The Walls of Eurydice

“No!” the Monster yelled out.

Harry felt his knees buckle and go weak, pain flaring through him. If the Monster hadn’t still been clutching onto him, he was certain he would have crumpled to the floor.

It felt like his nerve endings were being shredded again and again, without ever managing to lose feeling. Just knives running through his veins. The Monster’s shadows drew in tighter around him, drawing him back.

But it seemed too late – his head was spinning so fast he could barely see straight. The Nameless swung in his double vision. The Past watched wide-eyed from his painting, small hands pressed against the canvas as if he wished he could reach out.

_Beware the Kisses Cursed._

Scarlet eyes burned into him as he stared up blearily, the kiss tingling on his lips.

“Vol–" Harry began, only for a hand to clamp over his mouth as the Nameless tutted.

“Don’t make me gag you, Offering. You’re going to have enough difficulty breathing without that.” Nameless glanced at the Monster. “Unless, of course, the abomination chooses to help you.”

Help him…?

“He can take anything that has happened to you, since you struck your bargain,” the Nameless reminded, with entirely-too-grim satisfaction. “Including that kiss. Take it, and absorb it into himself. Though, of course, with a curse so powerful as a failed true love’s kiss –"

_So that was what it was._

"It would do to me what it’s doing to him,” the Monster snarled back, glaring at You-Know-Who.

Harry couldn’t see the Nameless’ expression in the darkness, was struggling enough with following this conversation when they seemed to know precisely what was happening and he didn’t. And the pain didn’t fade. Instead it grew, spreading through his body like his blood was constricting.

“That is your choice,” the Nameless said lightly. “As is this. You can stay here and fix him, knowing everything that will happen to you if you are still here once dawn arrives. Or … you can trade him. Renounce your claim, give me the offering, and I will let you leave my realm unscathed.”

Harry’s head was pounding. He twisted his head to look at the Monster in the light of the painting, heart hammering, only for the shadows holding him up to retract as if scalded. He hit the floor on his knees, and refused to feel betrayed.

“Tom …" His jaw clenched. The Monster’s head snapped to him for a long moment.

He had no idea what the Nameless intended to do with him, but considering that even the Monster had seemed terrified of him, Harry wasn’t going to count on a friendly chat and a restful night.

But, as the silence stretched, he knew he couldn’t count on the Monster. Name and order him, perhaps, but…

“Go on, then,” he spat. “We both know you’re not going to pick me.”

The Monster ran a black tongue over his lips, no expression on his face.

“You did jump into this painting to save me in the first place. I wouldn’t wish to insult or waste your sacrifice, noble as it is.”

Harry’s eyes tightened. “Stop talking. Seriously. Go. Or I’ll kill you myself, curse or cure be bloody damned.”

The Nameless snorted.

The Monster studied him for a moment longer – maybe enjoying the sight of him in agony, for all Harry knew – before crouching down beside him. Harry didn’t dare hope, but for a stupid second, with the pain tearing through him enough to make him want to sob, something awfully similar to hope surged in his chest.

“I’ll come back for you, _Harry Potter_. One way or another. Unlike some –” he gave the Nameless a seething look that bordered on bravado– “I know that _true_ claims lie outside of words, so easily fooled and played with.”

“Don’t bother,” Harry replied coldly. He no longer cared if he offended the bastard or not. The Monster’s expression shuttered and he straightened haughtily, shadows cloaking the air around him.

“I renounce my claim.”

Then he was gone.

Harry sagged to the floor, aware of the Nameless still standing over him with those eyes. The Past had vanished too, no doubt due to the Monster’s presence in his realm.

Harry had the vindictive hope that the Prophecy would torment the Monster whilst it was stuck in the painting, but that really would make all of this for nothing.

He shuddered, back arching as his breath constricted. It felt like something had gouged out his throat, though when he raised a hand to his neck, choking down shallow breaths of air, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

“Well,” he snarled, “what are you waiting for? Finish the job, then.”

The Nameless was studying him – well, it couldn’t really be studying him. The Nameless couldn’t actually see, could he? Even if he was staring at him with all the intensity of a basilisk.

The other moved closer to him, fingers tangling into his hair, smoothing down along the contours of his face, as if feeling him out.

“I don’t need to finish anything. It is already happening, offering. You should have spoken up earlier, instead of siding with the monstrosity. The abomination has no loyalty to anyone, not even those it claims to be its own.”

Harry snorted, somehow not surprised that this was turning into yet another competition between the pieces.

“So, Past turns me into a doll if I get stuck in his painting. The Monster drains my memories and soul, the Riddle my mind, and the Beast would tear me apart. What do you do? What do you want?”

The Nameless was the Beast’s counterpart, except apparently Harry couldn’t name him – or at least, shouldn’t. But was there something here that could keep him alive?

“You cannot give me what I want.”

“I’m the offering,” Harry said flatly. “That I probably can is precisely the point –”

“I don’t want it,” the Nameless interrupted coolly, letting him drop to the floor. “I just want to see how much the others would give me to have you back.”

Harry’s stomach dropped.

“Apparently not much, if we’re going by the Monster. So it was a pretty terrible move on your part,” he replied. The Nameless simply hummed, a smile on his lips.

“We’ll see. I think I know them a little better than you, despite everything.“ There was something in the Nameless’ expression. Harry shoved himself up to stand as best he could, the world spinning nauseatingly around him.

“The Monster suggested you might be the piece that … created the other pieces. Including the Prophecy, then?”

“Smart boy.”

“Except you’re now trapped in a painting which the Prophecy controls,” Harry said. The Nameless looked rather less amused, grabbing his throat in a lash of movement. Harry refused to flinch. What could the creature do to him that he hadn’t experienced already? “You want control again,” he rasped insistently. “But you don’t want him free. You want him in chains.” He tugged at the icy fingers around his throat. “You don’t want me to break the curse.”

“You can’t get in too much trouble in here, with me. You can’t even see, let alone scheme,” the Nameless said. “It’s a pity, as you have been quite amusing so far.”

“Scheme?” Harry growled, black spots in his vision. “There’s a lot of bloody scheming in this house, but I’m not the one doing it!”

“You plotted your way into my domain of your own free will. I don’t like trespassers … I could kill you just for that.”

“Wouldn’t be very good leverage then. Besides, dawn will come soon enough. I could just leave then, when you’re not around!”

The Nameless let him drop to the floor again. Harry coughed and rubbed his airway, jaw clenched.

“Even if you run, that won’t relieve you from the curse,” the Nameless said. “You would be safer in here.”

“And how do you figure that?” Harry managed. The Nameless didn’t seem very safe to him – he’d already lined him up to die with a kiss, let alone whatever else he could apparently do and hadn’t yet.

He felt the vines beginning to coil around him again, pinning him to the spot in the darkness. The Nameless disappeared from sight, as his gaze finally turned away and he slipped back into the shadows of his world.

“Because I do not intend to let the Prophecy have you.”

Even when Harry asked after that, there was nothing.

* * *

Harry looked up, dazed, as pale sunlight hit his face, startling him from his uneasy sleep.

If he’d had the energy anymore, he would have started. Somehow, actually, he wasn’t even surprised for once. The vines had slid away sometime in the night.

The pain hadn’t.

“Eurydice, right?” He gave a tired sort of smile.

His own green eyes stared back at him. Younger than he was, just a child – and that really shouldn’t have been a surprise to him either.

That wasn’t what had him staring.

It was the way the small boy’s skin was half-turned to stone, the rock trapping his left arm, shoulder, and throat to become part of the wall behind him, one leg melding stone to the floor as the grass and the roses bloomed around him.

“You need to get out of the painting,” the boy said quietly. “It will do you no good to become too much a part of the house.” He glanced down at the stone that was forming around him.

Harry’s body still throbbed with pain, like something was clawing at him. “Because the rest of the house is so much safer,” he scoffed. “And I don’t know if Riddle’s around, but the bastard hasn’t been too helpful recently. Any chance you can give me passage?”

Why had Hermione said to beware Eurydice? If he couldn’t even trust himself, who the hell was he supposed to trust?

“You do not want to use me yet. If ever. The price might be more than you could possibly afford. You should be more concerned with the Offering right now. He will show you the truth of what is happening to you. Of the cursed kiss.”

Right, the painting in Riddle’s room. Still … if Eurydice represented something that Orpheus went back for, and thus maybe his connection to Ginny as he had started all of this to save her … why was the painting of him? And not of her?

“What’s the price?” That, at least, was the one question they always answered.

“You know the story. To look back is to turn to stone. You will be drawn into the foundations of the house, tied to this place as much as the rest of us are. The walls here are made up of the dead. You will never be able to leave.

“Each painting has their role to play,” the boy murmured. “The Riddle will answer your questions. The Past will tell you of the curse’s past, of _his_ past, and lead you to your potential future together and so the Prophecy.”

“And Nameless?”

“He created the pieces, as you know. He can join them again too. Of course, he would need … persuasion. Neither he nor the Beast would much like to see this curse broken. A heart is a painful thing, and death is the greatest fear of men.”

Harry’s eyes widened as he absorbed that. The Beast didn’t want the curse broken in the sense of being united again, but was forced by the Prophecy to enforce it anyway. The Monster … who even knew what the Monster and the Riddle wanted. Maybe to have it broken? Maybe to have darkness spread?

“And you?” he asked.

“The Offering is your future, eternal. He reflects what is happening to you now, as well as what will happen, depending on what your current plan of action is. I am what you have already done. And I am the opportunity to do something again.”

That definitely grabbed Harry’s attention.

“I can choose to redo something? Whatever I like?” Right now, with every inch of him in pain, not jumping into this bloody painting after the bloody Monster seemed like something he would very much like to take back. “How does that work if I just turn to stone?”

“It depends on whether you make what you do count – or not. There are always consequences.”

Harry’s heart was slamming against his ribs. He found himself taking a step forward, and then another, as Eurydice watched him quietly.

“Or … you can just look,” Eurydice murmured. “Freeze yourself in a memory, and let the world crumble as it will. Any memory. You don’t remember mum and dad, do you? I do. I could show you that as well, if that is what you choose.”

Longing swelled sharp in his chest, until he felt he could burst open with yearning. His limbs quivered, his insides ached. Everything seemed tired and drained, like his very bones had lost the will to keep working.

The Riddle appeared out of nowhere.

“Stay _away_ ,” Riddle hissed, yanking him back roughly. “If you want even a chance of leaving here, you can’t look back.”

“And there was me thinking the plan was that I never left anyway,” Harry growled. “Or does it infuriate the Prophecy that I might die on my own terms?” It felt like he was dying. The failed kiss was like a poison in his veins, something that submerged him in ice and fire.

The Riddle’s grip on him tightened. “I’m not letting you go.”

“You know where to find me, Harry.”

And, for a moment, as he glanced back at the smiling painting, he could have sworn that those green eyes turned red.

* * *

Harry had expected the Offering to look different in light of what Eurydice told him, but the truth of his situation was still a slap in the face.

The thorns and roses were no longer merely a crown around his head; they had bled out of the surrounding painting to wrap around his throat. They dove into his skin and slid through his veins only to burst out of his wrists to wrap around his arms like shackles again. His legs, too, his torso – gouging open his chest to form the largest rose around his heart.

It seemingly squeezed the beating life out of him, smearing the painting and his skin with blood as he was yanked back against the wall in the painting in a manner eerily similar to the Prophecy’s position in the nursery.

Harry’s knees nearly buckled as he stared in horror.

It wasn’t like before, when the picture presented an image he couldn’t actually feel. He realized the pain now was as if the thorns were crawling through his veins, choking him from the inside out as the roses bloomed with a bloody vibrancy at odds with the withered petals in the Beast’s chest.

The Riddle kept him upright, dragging him along.

“I can’t fix this,” the counterpart murmured, leaning over him where he’d pushed him to the bed, fingers stroking along his face. “But I could make it stop hurting. Pain, pleasure … it’s all in the brain. Give me your mind, Harry, and I could make all of the pain go away.”

“Go to hell,” Harry rasped. “If you hadn’t locked the Monster in here in the first place, this would never have happened. Where is the bastard, anyway?”

He felt fuzzy around the edges, as if the whole world was sliding nauseatingly around him. All he wanted to do was bury his head into the lovely cool sheets and never get up again.

Unfortunately, he had far too much to do for that.

He struggled to push himself up, only for the Riddle’s hand to plant firmly on his chest and guide him down. Not for the first time, Harry felt a sharp frisson of fear.

“Tom …" he warned.

“I just want to see,” the Riddle crooned, other hand sliding to pet his hair. Harry suspected the git would reach in and claw at his brain if he physically could. Examine the nerve endings, and play them like violin strings. “Please let me see, Harry. Why would you do this to yourself?”

“Me?” Harry spluttered. “Nameless is the one who kissed me!”

“But why would you jump into the painting after the Monster? You have indicated that you are not so eager to die, but considering the apparent hero complex, sometimes I wonder.”

“I can’t break the curse if you’ve killed each other and lost the puzzle pieces,” Harry hissed, mouth suddenly dry. “That’s all it is.”

Riddle’s head tilted to one side.

“You’re in no position to get around on your own. If you stay in the painting long enough, you’ll become like me,” the shard whispered. “I can wait you out, if you won’t give me what I want.”

Okay. Enough. Absolutely enough.

“You think that’s how love works?” Harry snapped. He shoved hard, pain be damned, and Riddle staggered backwards as he sat up, panting hard for breath. “You can’t force someone to love you. You can’t force someone to be friends with you! Or to give you something, if you want it to count.”

Riddle stared at him in astonishment. Harry’s fists clenched at his sides.

“You want to know what I’m _thinking?_ ” Harry advanced on the creature, finding some strange irony in the fact that the Riddle actually backed up a step before haughtily stopping himself. “Why don’t you just ask? Why don’t you just choose to give a damn about somebody who isn’t yourself?”

“When someone loves you, you possess them: body, soul, and mind,” Riddle began. Harry made a scathing sound that crumbled around a despairing incredulity.

“You think possessing my mind will make me _love_ you?” It was actually kind of tragic. “That’s about as stupid as the Beast thinking he has to actually eat my heart.”

“Harry –"

“No, seriously.” Harry grabbed hold of the edge of the bed for balance. “Explain it to me. What the hell is going on in your head?”

The Riddle was silent for a long time, glaring at him furiously.

“If I own your mind, you would think of me. You would only think of me, with complete devotion. You wouldn’t –"

“Wouldn’t?” Harry prompted, tone a little softer now, brow furrowed. Head pounding.

“You can’t judge or leave if I control your thoughts. You think we can’t see the disgust with which you look at us? The way you would see us condemned, like everyone else?”

The silence was ringing. Harry opened his mouth to say something, but nothing would come out. Eventually, he sighed.

He was rather abruptly reminded of the Past, though considering everything he knew of the pieces and their totality together, that should not have come as a shock. Same problem, different angles. Same man, shattered.

“Come here.”

“What?”

Harry made an impatient gesture, and then curled up exhausted against the idiot because he was in too much pain to have this mess of a conversation upright. Riddle stiffened at first, which Harry thought was a bit rich. Still, he stayed stubbornly put, and waited for the other to relax.

He just didn’t think it would be so easy as a hug this time. Riddle dealt in thoughts, after all. In intelligence, and minds.

“I wouldn’t see you condemned,” Harry said. “But you can’t force me to love you.”

“Actually, in regards to conditioning there was an exper–"

“Shut up,” Harry huffed. “You can’t. Not properly. Love necessitates choice, not force. Though it says a lot about all of you that you all view love as taking or consuming something of me. I’m not saying that’s not some form of love, but don’t you think there’s a reason this prophecy and your mother’s curse is based on offering and not taking?”

“My mother was a fool. You could tell that much by her choice of husband.”

“Funny, the things we’d do for the people we care about,” Harry said dryly. Riddle glanced at him.

“Would you do that for me then? Give me your thoughts?”

“You have a one-track mind.” Harry forced down his frustration. “It’s called talking, you overgrown blob of paint! That’s how you share thoughts. You talk. You begin trusting each other and letting them inside your head.”

“Sounds unnecessarily dangerous,” Riddle muttered. “Who knows what you would do in there.”

“Are you –" No. Harry already knew the Riddle wasn’t joking. He was almost amused, because with his insides feeling like they were being shredded, there weren’t that many other defences to go to. “How do you expect me to let you get in my head if you refuse to reciprocate?”

“What? No – this is about you loving _me_ …"

Sometimes, Harry wondered.

But as he lay there, Riddle’s fingers in his hair and the portrait of the Offering a grotesque sacrifice on the wall … Riddle began to talk.

* * *

When Harry woke once more – not even sure when precisely he’d lost consciousness in the first place – he was on his bed and it was night.

There were platters of food set alongside his bed, water and wine too.

He stirred, pain still throbbing an insistent presence on his insides. The Nameless was watching him impassively from his frame.

Bile clawed up Harry’s throat.

“What … happened?” he asked.

“The Riddle took you out of the painting,” the Nameless replied delicately. “Between him and the Beast, you were sickeningly well taken care of. Still dying, of course …”

Harry blinked.

“They … took care of me? I passed out?”

“You’re in the process of having the life squeezed out of you,” the Nameless said. “Of course you passed out.” His voice was quiet. “And of course they did. They would rather see you suffering a million agonies than see someone else get you – death most definitely included.”

Harry studied him for a moment longer. “You don’t seem as pleased about that as I thought you would be. My dying, I mean. Considering you treat the rest of us like we’re fools for even trying to win this game.”

“I do not wish for the curse to be broken,” the Nameless allowed. “And you are in direct contradiction of that goal.”

So … he did want him dead?

“Apparently I’m not. The Monster took my future, by all regards,” Harry muttered.

“The Monster wants the curse broken,” Nameless said. “He simply does not want the Prophecy to be free. And, as you might have gathered, the two are … inextricably linked.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“How shocking. How novel. You understand so much, I simply cannot comprehend how the complexities of this are surpassing you.”

Harry glared furiously.

“I’m dying. Fuck off. It’s your fault.”

“If you go by the logic of the pieces, if the Monster has your future, he can control it. If he controls the future of the offering, he controls how this works out. To the mind of most. Childish logic, but then the Prophecy is a child, is he not?”

Harry’s brow furrowed at that, not sure what to think. Though a thought suddenly struck him.

“… you’re answering my questions.”

“Astute of you to notice.”

“I thought Riddle was the only one who could answer my questions.” Harry’s heart suddenly felt like it might burst out of his chest. The phantom memory of the Riddle’s fingers in his hair, of the liquid baritone in his ear as the Riddle just talked.

Talked … when to talk, meant to share a brain and thoughts, and so your mind. His eyes widened.

“You’d best hurry up, offering,” the Nameless murmured. “Four to go, but you’ll be dead before the month is out. I suppose you had best hope for a true love’s kiss at the end of this. Without the Monster, it might just be the only thing that can save you now.”

God, he was screwed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an annual tradition of posting on my birthday (9 minutes passed, but close enough as I haven't gone to bed yet.) Woo 21! Hope you enjoy the chapter as much as I enjoy being able to legally drink again. God, America makes no sense.
> 
>   
>  **[Eurydice](http://lydiatheda.deviantart.com/art/Eurydice-488377851)** , by Lydia Theda


	11. The White Eyes and the Wand

Little Hangleton was quiet in the night – smothered in darkness, light shining insistently from the windows of the village pub.

Inside, the villagers gathered. Bustling, feverish, and sombre, all at the same time.

"No offering has ever lasted this long!" Ginny's fists clenched at her sides. "He's still alive. I know he is, I can feel it."

"Maybe the Beast is dead," Ron said.

"If he were dead," Lucius Malfoy said, "then the boy would have returned by now. This is foolishness."

"We can't do  _nothing_." Ginny looked to her family, eyes ablaze and cheeks flushed. "Not after everything the monster has done to us. Not after everything Harry has sacrificed!"

The argument was a familiar one from the last three nights, circling around the house on the hill and the fact that no body – mutilated or otherwise – had been returned to them. Of course, there were the rare times in the past where no sign of the offering was ever returned to them but…

"There were strawberries growing," Sprout murmured from her spot at the back of the room. She looked revitalized for the first time since forever. "Rubeus saw them too. Strawberries again!" Her large hat quivered on her head with excitement.

There hadn't been strawberries growing in the village in living memory. They were a sweet fantasy, from an age before the curse. Any who might remember that time, were long since dead or taken.

"The sun is smiling brighter too," Luna said. "The house isn't so sad anymore. Haven't you looked at it this morning?"

"That proves  _nothing_." Mayor Fudge's face reddened. "I am not risking my life for – for strawberries and the sun going up a minute earlier than normal!"

And so it went on.

"If the monster is weakened," someone said. "Then maybe we could kill it! Now would be the ideal time. It's taken enough from us. From all of us. Who's next? Who's next year?"

"Nobody survives that house. It's just not possible. If he was alive, he wouldn't still be in there."

"Well, I'm doing something," Ginny's shoulders drew back. "Even if the rest of you don't believe."

"It's too dangerous," Molly's voice trembled. "The poor boy, if he is still trapped in there with that – that  _thing_  – but-"

Adults weary, children growing bold.

And the storm began to brew, as the kitchen knives and matches began to disappear.

* * *

Obviously, something had to be done.

Harry was sure he would get right to it once he figured out what exactly that something was, and how to get himself out of bed when it felt like he was being gouged even in perfect stillness.

Past. Riddle. Nameless. Beast. Monster. Prophecy.

The Past wanted a friend. The Riddle wanted an intellectual companion, someone to talk and connect with. The Riddle, the very epitome even by name of someone difficult to understand, wanted to be understood and not just understand the minds of others in turn. The Monster who wanted emotions, memories – a place. The Beast wanted his heart quite literally, so Harry wasn't quite sure what to do about that one yet.

To love someone – mind, body and soul. That was easy to wrap his head around, however convoluted their efforts in practice.

And the Prophecy wanted the future of a curse broken. When you loved someone, you wanted a future with them, right?

But what did the Nameless want?

A name?

If they all wanted love in different ways, then Nameless seemed a strange manifestation of pure hate. His kiss was a curse, a promise of poison and murder that distorted something that should have been the epitome of love to something terrible. What would Nameless want out of love when he didn't seem to want love or a heart at all?

Harry rolled over, unable to find a comfortable position on the bed. Dug his nails so hard into his palms that the blood bloomed like rose petals in his palms. He promptly rolled over to turn his back again.

How could it be a name, when Eurydice had said that calling Nameless by his name – aside from breaking one of the rules of the house – would merge all the shards together? Surely that had to wait until they were all unlocked? He didn't think he should be slamming broken jigsaw pieces together.

But a name was overwhelmingly what the Nameless was lacking.

Tom Riddle. Lord Voldemort. They were both the same, weren't they? The same person?

What then, was the point of a name? Why was there both Tom Riddle and Lord Voldemort?

What did a name give, that he could offer instead of the actual name?

He sat up abruptly, eyes widening.

"Why did the  _Beast_ pick the name Voldemort?" he asked. Nameless' eyes narrowed from the painting. "You have to answer me now," Harry reminded. He'd unlocked the Riddle, and so such truths and possibilities.

"… Why would any of us want the name of the man who abandoned us?"

Harry smothered a grin, because as tragic as Nameless' non-answer was, it would be utterly inappropriate to smile. It faded as he glanced to the door, keeping an eye out for the others.

He was pretty sure neither the Riddle nor the Monster would be pleased to see him tackle Nameless, after what happened last time in the painting. He probably only had a limited amount of time before one or both turned up.

Last he checked, Riddle had gone to see about getting him more food. Harry had claimed to be far more hungry than he was, just to get some peace.

Step two – get out of bed.

Every movement shot pain through his bones, and stabs of agony like lightning sizzling through his forehead as his head pounded. The world swayed nauseatingly around him.

When he finally stood, his knees buckled instantly. The Nameless snorted. Harry gave him his best impression of a Basilisk in turn.

Step three – stand up, and go to the damn painting. Before he was stopped.

It was slow going. Every step was shaking by now, every step like walking on needles. He resisted the urge to check if his feet were actually bleeding. They felt like they should be.

He glanced at the door once more, wetting his lips.

Finally, he reached Nameless – tentatively held out a hand to the painting. Felt his fingers slide through, exhaled a breath.

 _Oh he could go through alright._ Definitely the next one. The Nameless was studying him, no expression on his face. Or at least Harry felt like he was being studied, assessed to the very soul of him … he just wasn't sure if the painting could actually see him or not.

He took the plunge.

The darkness was just as thick as the first time. The type of shadow that could claw into his lungs and crowd his mouth and nose like smoke.

Those scarlet eyes were already fixed on him. For a long moment, Harry was petrified. Waiting for a move, perhaps, or trying to convince his legs that they should definitely start working now please.

A hand reached out, pale in eerie light from the other side of the painting. Fingers mapped out his features, and Nameless' lipless mouth twisted.

"You are afraid. Are you scared of the dark, Offering?"

Harry's jaw clenched, and he took step forward out of a pure, stubborn spite.

"I apologize for intruding on your painting without permission last time," he said. Recalling the rules. "I didn't mean any disrespect to you, or the house. May I proceed?"

The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end at the laugh he got in response to that particular comment. A hand snaked around his shoulders, drawing him further away from the light. At least in this room, he could find his way back.

"Uh, thanks," Harry said. Swallowed, tried to gather his scattered thoughts.

"You look terrible."

"Having the life squeezed out of you will do that." It slipped out before he could entirely help himself.

"If you're trying to get me to take it back-"

"-I'm not." Names. Names and their significance. Names were  _power,_ and Nameless had obviously been stripped of his. The name that they chose, before any of this. Of Voldemort. If Tom Riddle was a boy abandoned by his father, of who he was named, he didn't think he would want his father's name either. The name of someone he had been taught to believe was worthless. "I'm not so stupid as to think you would simply agree to that. I mean, if you want to, by all means I definitely won't complain and if you want to make a trade on the matter, by all means name your price … but I'm not here for that."

"I told you, you cannot give me what I want."

"Why don't you tell me what you want, and we'll see?" Harry kept his voice resolutely cheerful, even as he felt the thorny vines twisting around his legs again. Which, considering that right now he genuinely would not have been able to tell if they wormed into his veins was making him twitch. Far too much of a physical reminder of what was happening to him.

" _Everything._ The world." Nameless' tone was mocking. "I have far larger ambitions then trying to claim an offering that already belongs to me."

"I don't belong to you. If I did, I would be dead because like the Monster, or the Beast, you would have already taken what you wanted from me. The Past tried."

"The Past is a child."

And Nameless – Voldemort – hated how he had been as a child. Hated childhood and childhood things for the weakness he saw in them, the foolishness. Could barely stand the thought of Tom Riddle, when he had tried so hard to escape the trappings of that name and the boy he used to be. Harry considered.

Being important to someone was part of love. Accepting them was a loving act. To name something was to someway understand it. Names had power. He'd thought all this before. Steeled himself, now.

"Harry," he said, after a moment. "Harry Potter. Harry James Potter if you want to be really formal about it. Nice to meet you."

The Nameless stared at him. "What?"

"My name," Harry didn't lower his gaze. Heart frantic in his throat. "You can have it, if you like."

"There's a power in names," the Nameless said.

"Then I trust you won't abuse the privilege of having mine."

"Then you are a fool." Unlike what Harry had expected, those eyes had darkened. In the shadows, the vines and the thorns stirred with a violent unrest. "A fool who will be left without a name in the pages of history. Left without connection to what will come, or what has come before you. You may as well … be a ghost."

Harry felt the vines beginning to converge on him, the darkness too, like something visceral crowding every inch of his body.

"Wait-" he really hoped he didn't have to resort to naming in return. " _Wait._ You don't want to kill me."

"I wasn't going to kill you; you're already dying," the Nameless said. "I was going to put you somewhere for safekeeping."

That didn't sound all that more reassuring.

"You want power," Harry said, heart hammering. "I get that. You chose a name of power and it was  _taken from you_ , everything you were and worked for was taken from you by the curse, and made into a mockery. A man who didn't want his heart, is in physical agony without it. A child who wanted an important future is given no future at all. A man who can get into the minds of the others so well, is denied the possibility to be understood by anyone in turn…" Harry swallowed. "A man who spent his whole life being called a monster was turned into one. It's not fair."

"Life generally isn't." The Nameless seemed unmoved. Harry's fists clenched.

"And then some boy you never chose and never wanted walks into your home, with all the power to change your situation when you can't. When you don't have that power at all, and are just stuck in the Prophecy's game. A boy who you think is a complete idiot."

The vines stilled, a coiled serpentine threat around his limbs. But what could really hurt him now anyway? Harry didn't flinch, staring back even as his pulse fluttered frantic.

"I have a quest for you," the Nameless said, before he could continue. The thorns slowly melted away. Harry felt like the worst quest-hero ever, considering it was something of an effort not to throw up on the Nameless' feet.

The lack of not being murdered had to mean something, didn't it?

"A … quest?"

"To prove yourself worthy of the powers of the Offering. I have no use for children who rely on Prophecies and luck and love."

Harry squared his shoulders, jutting his chin up.  
"What's the quest?" he asked.

"There is an item I wish for you to retrieve. A wand."

"Like a  _magic_ wand?" Harry's eyes widened.

"Yes, like a magic wand." The Nameless gave him a withering look. "Of course a magic wand."

Harry tried not to be offended, giving a nod.  
"Where do I find this magic wand of yours?"

"In the Prophecy's room."

This day just kept getting bloody better.

* * *

"Don't be ridiculous," the Riddle said. "You're not facing the Prophecy in your current state."

"He's a child quite literally chained to his nursery bed," Harry replied. Making sure not to look too clammy, or at least to sound convincing considering he doubted he could make the beads of sweat on his forehead mysterious disappear.

"And what of the Monster?"

"He seems to be avoiding me fine so far." Harry headed for the door.

"I didn't put a question mark on the matter," Riddle grabbed his arm. "You're not going."

Harry's eyes narrowed.

"I'd rather not argue whilst we were getting on so well," he said. The grip only tightened further.

"No."

"And again we're back to I chose this and you don't get to tell me what to do." Harry's eyes flashed. "I'm already dying, not much point waiting lying in bed whilst I still have some strength to move." He forced his expression to soften, cupping Riddle's cheek. "I'll be fine.  _Trust me._ I've survived the lot of you so far, haven't I?"

"I am communicating my concern."

"And your concern is appreciated and duly noted, but unnecessary. Besides, the Prophecy already promised me to you didn't he?" Harry rolled his eyes. He was pretty sure at this point Riddle was saying anything so that he didn't go. "Come with me if you're worried." He shot Riddle a teasing grin. "Protect me from all the Monsters, Tom."

Riddle gave him a sour look, but said nothing. And maybe it said something that in the end the other didn't come with him either.

Once he was down the corridor, some of Harry's facade of strength gave out. Still, he had to reach the Past's portrait and get through before daybreak, heaven's help him he did not want to end up in Eurydice's portrait inadvertently. If that was possible.

The tendrils caught him as he stumbled on the stairs.

"Careful," the Monster's voice came from next to his ear. "Falling down the stairs would be the most pathetic way an offering has died so far."

Harry's expression shuttered.

When he turned around again, however, there was no sign of the Monster anywhere.  
Harry continued his way unimpeded, entering the Past's painting.

The Prophecy's room was the same as it had been the first time that Harry had seen it.

Those white eyes opened as he entered, fixing upon him with the same unnerving white.

"Do not give him the wand," the child said.

Harry wetted his lips.

"You know, when you say stuff like that, it makes me think you don't want the curse broken." He stepped further into the room, circling the room whilst keeping a healthy distance from the bed. Trying to spot the damn magic stick.

"I don't want him to have it." Now that sounded almost petulant.

Harry ignored him, for now, continuing his search. Ducked the letter opener thrown in his direction, that swerved towards his head again with an alarming accuracy.

"Why not?"

Another narrow miss, and the chest of drawers wrenched free and flung across the room in his direction. Harry threw himself to the floor, breath knocked out of his lungs. Rolled as the objects crashed down again – denting the ground he'd just been lying on.

He needed to find that wand, fast.

Where could it possibly be in the room though? Under the bed? Among the sheets? In that thrice damned chest of drawers set out to bludgeon his head into a pulp?

As the chest went for him again, Harry dove for the bed. Skidding under among the dust, coughing and groping in the dark as the vines writhed around him unnervingly. One seized his foot, dragging him out towards the chest again.

No wand.

He kicked at the roses, as more vines surged to immobilize and trap him. A far more vicious attack than he'd grown used to, even in this house.

Heart hammering, nausea rolling and throwing his reaction times off. The chest hovered ominously above him.

"Tom, don't you  _dare,"_ Harry hissed. "You kill me, and you're stuck against that wall forever either way. You need me alive."

The chest hovered for several inches still, as the Prophecy seemed to debate crushing his skull. Then the drawers were placed back in the corner, and the vines flung him back towards Past's paintings. He landed hard, smacking his head against the wall with a groan - glaring at the damn brat.

"Go away," the Prophecy said.

"Not without the wand."

"I'll hurt you."

"I'm already hurting." Harry shoved himself to his feet, as the vines coiled like vipers about to strike. Harry shoved his sweat-plastered hair from his face, body trembling.

The wand wasn't under the bed. Where else could it be?

Harry lunged for the drawers next, wrenching them back open and rummaging through. It immediately lurched into his knees, another draw smashing into his stomach in a warning to keep back.

He grappled with it with a grimace of pain - bruises seeming nothing considering to the assault his body was already under.

"I'm ordering you to leave! He can't have the wand!" The Prophecy said.

"Yeah? I don't really do orders." Harry gasped the words out through sharp intakes and wheezes of air - aha!

His fingers grasped a slim stick of wood, yanking it out as a grin split his face. The grin vanished as the letter opener hurtled for his eyes.

He fled for the painting.

If that was the best the Prophecy had, he really didn't see what everyone was so worried about.

It didn't stop him from sagging in relief as the portrait closed up behind him.

He wiped a shaky hand over his forehead, heart stuttering something sickly. He leaned heavily against the wall of the painting – just a second to catch his breath.

But he couldn't stay there. Dawn, and the painting would change from Past to Eurydice, and then where would he be?

He staggered forward as Past watched him.

The young painting was pale, chewing on his lip, eyes dark.  
"Don't go out there," the Past said.

"I have to."

"He'll kill you."

Harry continued onwards nonetheless, refusing to be deterred. He didn't have time for hesitations – he was so close that the end was actually beginning to be in sight! Nameless, Beast, Monster, Prophecy. If he could just get the wand to Nameless, that was only three more to go! Right?

He'd be halfway!

And hopefully not dead yet.

He emerged from the portrait to the sound of Past's entreaties, relieved to find that it was still dark. Not so relieved to find the Monster materializing in front of him, studying him.

God, Harry really wasn't sure he could do two battles in a row. He steeled himself.

"Take what you want of my memories and get out of the way," he rasped.

"You should not be out here," the Monster said. "As funny as I find you irritating the Prophecy, I'd rather my food source not be abruptly terminated."

"You lot have no faith whatsoever in my capabilities of survival," Harry said. He shoved his way past. "If you were that concerned, why haven't you absorbed this damn kiss off me yet? You-Know-Who seems to believe you can."

"That kiss is poison. I have no way of spitting out what I consume, it's not like I sit down at a dinner table."

Harry nearly rolled his eyes. Of course it was that.

"Unless, of course you happen to be in love with me?" the Monster materialized in front of him again.

Harry raised his brows. "Yeah, sorry. Not yet."

"Inconvenient."

"Love normally is," Harry said.

"Is it?"

"So I've been led to believe." Harry shoved past again, with an increasing unease. "I'd quite like to be in and out of the Nameless' painting tonight, thank you."

"Do you want the Nameless to have unspeakable power?" The Monster asked.

Harry glanced at him, nails digging into his palms. Suddenly intimately aware of the weight of the wand in his pocket.

"I want to break the curse, preferably without dying," Harry said.

"And you are willing to offer everything, sacrifice everything, to that goal?"

Harry's eyes narrowed. "Do I have a choice?"

"Presumably," the Monster said. "If you truly are the Offering. The others didn't. The curse is weakening, has it occurred to you to run?"

Harry froze, stopping and turning to face the Monster. The thought hadn't even crossed his mind since that first night.

"Where could I possibly run to?"

"Anywhere. Everywhere. If you can survive the forest wolves, you should be able to leave Little Hangleton now. If Riddle can leave his portrait."

Harry's mouth had drained dry. "Wouldn't stop the kiss from killing me, though."

"Unless you were in love with somebody else."

Harry faltered, scuffing his feet against the floor. "Why are you telling me this?"

"I told you, I don't want your memories terminated yet. I'm not done with you yet."

"I thought I'd be outside of your influence if I left?"

"Maybe if I was tied to the house," the Monster said. It leaned in, suddenly intent, licking its lips. "You would have better chance leaving if I helped you. I know this area, I know the passages and the secrets. I  _feed_ on people's innermost secrets and hopes. We could go, together."

"… You're asking me to run away with you." Harry's head was spinning. "What about the others?"

"What about them?" the Monster blinked. One eye, then the other, in quick succession. Eerily reptilian.

"You want me to just leave them?" Harry was surprised to find his blood boiling, chin jutting up. "What the  _fuck?"_

The Monster's head tilted. "You have no reason to stay."

"I told them I'd help them."

"You're mine."

"Fuck you." Harry recoiled. "You don't get to just swan in, after ignoring me for however many days and leaving me to  _die,_ and claim I'm yours. You renounced your claim. I told them I'd help them, I'm not going to abandon them."

"Even when they're trying to actively kill you and don't want your help?" The Monster's eyes darkened to impossible levels. "You're a fool."

"You know the thing I find funny about all of this?" Harry took a step forward. Despite how all instincts generally screamed to keep distance between himself and the shadowy figure. He wetted his lips, cold prickling up his spine. "You've been loved before. The lot of you can be charming when you want to be, and I've seen people falling over themselves trying to be your friend and impress you in Past's memories. Before this curse began."

The Monster's expression soured.

"Is this really about me loving you, or is it about the lot of you learning to give a crap about somebody other than yourself?" Harry demanded.

"They were in love with a fairytale, Harry Potter. One that was always cursed."

Dawn spilled over them.

* * *

The Beast replaced the Monster in seconds, and Harry had never been so infuriated by that fact in his whole life. Because an explanation to that last comment would have been nice.

The Beast's eyes were white.

Harry stiffened, taking several large steps back – stumbling in his nausea.

"The wand," the Beast – or maybe it was the Prophecy he was really talking to? – said. "Give it back."

Definitely the Prophecy.

"Did you really expect that one to work after you just tried to murder me with the furniture?"

The other was silent for a moment, then the Beast's body gave a sickening crack. Limbs twisting as Harry's eyes widened and his stomach knotted. Nails sharpened to vicious claws, head rolling and snapping back more … beast-like than before.

Harry didn't know that was even possible.

It was at that point that he figured he should  _run_ though _._

He sprinted for his room, on automatic. Or just away, really … except, the Prophecy was what had kept his room safe. There was nowhere in the house that was truly safe now.

Harry's head span. Each thump of his foot on the ground sent a new wave of pain throbbing through his body. Black spots popped in his vision.

He heard a feral snarl behind him, but didn't dare glance back.

 _Think. Think. Think._ Where could he go? Somewhere small, so that the Beast couldn't fit?

The creature barrelled into him with impossible force. Harry didn't hesitate to kick at snapping jaws, breath trapped in his throat. Hot breath blew his hair back, saliva dripping to his leg as he scrambled back.

There was nothing human to the Beast now – no rationale in those eyes. They remained as white as the creature's hairless, hideous body, the colour of bone. Misshapen, with a gaping hole in the chest that oozed blood out of the beating rose-heart.

Scratches gouged into the floor.

"Voldemort-" Harry began.

"Harry!" The shout came from behind him. He narrowly missed another bite as he lurched to his feet, the Beast whining after another kick in the face.

The Riddle seized his arm, tugging Harry's battered body along as the Beast righted itself.

"You took your sweet time showing up." Harry could have kissed him. "What the hell is going on?"

"You irritated the Prophecy. Get behind me, and run. I'll see if I can buy you some time. Find somewhere to hide. Small, where he can't fit."

He'd gathered that part! He'd been rather more concerned with the fact that the Beast had turned into his rather more literal namesake, and seemed invested in ripping him from limb to limb. He staggered back as Riddle shoved him behind him, the former-portraits shoulders squaring as he faced the Beast.

It approached them slower this time, as if knowing there was no where they could really go. Heavy, feral breaths as Harry stared.

He didn't know how to describe the creature – vaguely canine, perhaps. Except canine seemed too pale a word, and there was no fur.

Harry swallowed, throat thick. "Don't suppose you can shift shape too?"

" _Run."_

"I'm not leaving you to-"

"You can swoon over my heroics later if you're still alive. I'll expect complete adoration. Now  _go._ It's not me it's trying to kill and you're a liability right now. Go!"

The Beast lunged.  
Riddle went for the heart. Exposed, pulsating, protected only by a thorny maze.

Harry's feet had rooted to the floor. They were going to kill each other. They were honestly going to kill each other.

The Riddle screamed as jaw clamped on his neck, and the Beast howled as fingers clawed at the wilting rose.

What happened if one piece died?

Then the Riddle was tossed aside with the grace of a ragdoll, slumping against the wall.

White eyes fixed on Harry.

_Shit._

Harry stumbled back a step, as the Beast once again growled low in its throat. Harry held his hands up.

"Voldemort, you don't want to do this.  _Tom._ I'm trying to help you."

It sprung at him again, and Harry flung himself to the floor towards the Riddle. Scrambling to think - maybe he should have ran when he had the opportunity. The Beast pivoted quickly.

"The wand." Riddle's voice was weak, but mercifully there. " _Give me my wand."_

Harry reached into his pocket. The creature attacked again, tongue serpentine between shark-sharp teeth. Harry's heart was hammering, shot off.

The wand landed between them, out of reach. White eyes gleamed, fixating on the stick.

Harry jerked himself off the floor without thinking, lunging for it the same time as the beast did. They collided, heavy body pinning him down and jaws in his face - a petal falling with obscene gentleness towards Harry's stomach.

"Harry!" He'd never heard Tom scream like that.

Harry groped for something to defend himself, anything, god anything please it couldn't end here - his hand landed on something and he jabbed it forward without thinking.

The Beast smashed against the opposite wall.

For a moment, eerily, nothing moved. Harry expected to see someone else, anyone else who had done something. For Riddle to have attacked the Beast again, but when he glanced over Tom lay limp. Staring at him. Staring at Harry's hand with wide-eyes.

Harry looked down.

The stick was glowing at the tip. The  _wand...the magic wand._  
Harry laughed, giddily. Tears in his eyes as he gritted his teeth, shakily pushing himself up on one elbow. He dragged his aching body towards the Riddle, slumping next to him as the ink smeared against his fingers.

He kept the wand pointed at the beast, chest heaving.

It stayed still. White eyes were fixed on his hand now too, wide just like the Riddle's were.

"You can do magic like me?"

Harry had never thought he'd be so relieved to hear Voldemort's voice, to watch the white eyes darken back to that bloody scarlet.

Harry blinked. "It's a magic wand, isn't it?"

He had no idea why they were both staring at him like that. Couldn't even imagine ever seeing that look on their faces, considering half the time they were skeptical that he could survive them at all.

But this... _this was reverence._ Or wonder, or  _something._

"That's our wand. It should be loyal - you - you're a muggle!"

"Is that the non-magic people you bitch about in your memories?"

They ignored the question. Harry tentatively allowed his throbbing arm to lower, spent, now that the immediate danger seemed to be over.

The Beast's body seemed to wither back to what it normally was. But broken, crumpled from the fight. Shuddering.

Harry looked between them, both wrecked over this. Over this wand, and the Prophecy, and some stupid clutch for power that Harry didn't even understand.

The nausea lurched in his mouth more than ever, bile burning on his tongue. But he couldn't give up yet, he couldn't. The rose looked worse than ever too. There were only a few browning petals left. Riddle must have managed to wrench at a good part out, during their fight, because the thorns were bent out of shape too.

"What can I do?" he asked, looking between them. "You're both hurt."  
Nameless wouldn't appear until nightfall anyway.

"I don't need your help," the Beast said.

Yeah, sure. Harry nonetheless turned his gaze to the Riddle, whose lips curled.  
"I thought you owed me a kiss for my heroic actions?"

Harry felt an absurd rush of fondness.  
It was official - insanity was contagious.

He entered the Nameless' portrait that night, clutching the wand in his hand.

The Riddle and the Beast would, apparently, make a recovery. More or less. Immortal bastards that they were. Apparently they'd been fine to neglect to remind him of that for  _hours_ as Harry worried over them.  _Bastards._

Harry squared his shoulders, as the darkness of the Nameless' painting immediately smothered him.

"I have your wand." He held it out. "Please don't use it to kill anyone."

"...and the Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal. For he will have the power the Dark Lord knows not."

Harry's nose wrinkled. "Now you're giving riddles too?"

The Nameless accepted the wand, fingers trembling around it.

...fingers trembling around it. He could  _see_ the Nameless's fingers. It wasn't just darkness! Harry barely dared to hope.

"Maybe you might have something to offer me in the world, after all. You are full of surprises."

Something had clicked on Nameless' face, some realization, and Harry's eyes narrowed.

"What?" he asked. "Don't tell me now you want me to go into the literal Underworld past a three headed dog next?"

The Nameless responded by raising the wand into the air. Harry flinched, bracing himself. You-Know-Who responded by tracing fiery letters into the space between them instead.

**Tom Marvolo Riddle.**

**I am Lord Voldemort.**

"I believe you have earned the honour to address me as such, Harry James Potter, when the time comes."

* * *

_A/N: Well, this was a hellish chapter to write. I hope you guys enjoy it! We're getting near to the end now. Only 2 chapters to go! (3 potentially, but it would be fantastic to finish on 13. We shall see.)_


	12. The Power of Offerings

Harry spat blood onto the floor. 

Getting out of bed seemed an impossible feat; his stomach clenched whenever he moved, though he had long since heaved whatever substance was left in his belly. 

His vision swam. 

He had to get to the Beast in the morning – but for now, he just wanted to sleep. 

“You look terrible,” the Monster said from outside his door. He’d appeared out of bloody nowhere, as per usual. 

“Thanks.” Harry blinked to focus himself, and wished he still had Nameless’ wand. Maybe then he wouldn’t feel quite so useless, or so defenseless. 

As it was, the bastard looked sickeningly smug in his painting. 

Harry’s head throbbed.

He’d since learned that only magical people could use wands, but as far as Harry knew, nobody in Little Hangleton was a witch or a wizard. If they were, they probably wouldn’t be offering sacrifices to the shadow on the hill in the first place.

Maybe it was just something that came with being the Offering? He didn’t know. 

The Nameless had called him a ‘mudblood’, which apparently meant a wizard born from non-magical parents. It seemed rich for Nameless to be commenting on anyone’s blood when he was a damn talking painting, but Harry was just going to take the answer for now. 

God, his head was spinning. 

Although … it seemed that the Monster was locked out of the room, since it was still standing so far away. 

Harry wiped drops of cold sweat from his forehead, hand trembling. He rolled over on the bed with a grunt of pain, so he didn’t have to watch the Monster staring at him. 

“Have you thought any more about my offer?” it continued. 

“I’m not running away with you.” That didn’t seem an option. Harry could barely make it to the end of the corridor, let alone through the woods. 

“I fear you will not survive the Prophecy.” The admission was quiet, but Harry stiffened. 

“Fuck the lot of you. You know that’s another part of love, having faith in someone, right?”

“Will you have faith in me if I ask you to come out of the room?” the Monster asked. Its nails scratched against the door.

He must have misheard. Harry rolled over again, scowling, nausea clawing up his throat with the shift. “What?”

“You are not going to survive another night; I know from experience. I can help – but only if you come out, or if you invite me into the room. The Prophecy is still blocking me from entering.” 

Did the Monster really expect him to be stupid enough to fall for that? 

“You didn’t seem all too interested in helping me earlier,” Harry rasped. 

“Earlier, you had a significant number of us left, and there was a strong possibility that the Nameless would slaughter you before you left his portrait,” the Monster said. “I daresay the only reason he didn’t was because he wanted to see if you truly had the power of the Offering. It would have been foolish of me to aid you then.”

God, what a git. Harry’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well, you left it too late if you want to help.”

“Excuse me?” The Monster’s fingers tightened on the door frame. Dark eyes roved over him. “If you intend to refuse my aid out of stubborn _pride_ –”

“I can’t move without spitting up a lung,” Harry hissed. Getting as far as the door seemed as much of a nauseating impossibility as escaping through the woods did.

The Monster stared at him, then looked at Nameless. The painting raised a brow. 

“You are not going to watch him die,” the Monster said, as if in response to some wordless conversation. “You like him.”

“And what do you imagine I can do?” the Nameless returned. “He needs to deal with the Beast first. There will be consequences if he doesn’t.” 

Harry’s brow furrowed, watching them. Deal with the Beast first? As far as the order of the pieces, yes, but… 

“If I let Monster help me, it will count as giving him what he wants? How the hell do you figure that?” 

Was that what they were talking about, or had Harry completely got the wrong end of the stick? 

“You could use that magic wand of yours to distract the Prophecy,” the Monster said to the painting.

The Nameless acted as if he hadn’t heard. “The Monster takes via kissing.”

Harry frowned. “I’ve kissed him before and he wasn’t magically fixed or made a better person.” Though … he supposed there was a … physical side to love, that so far hadn’t really been touched upon. His mouth dried. “What?” he asked, noticing their expressions. 

“Kissing can have a habit of escalating,” the Nameless said delicately. 

If Harry didn’t feel like the effort would kill him, blood would have rushed to his cheeks. “I – oh. He wants to – right. Can’t I just kiss him, get him to take the curse off, and just leave it at that until later?” 

He wondered what he should think of Tom Riddle Sr and Merope Gaunt, that apparently emotions came before a quick shag. 

“I’m offended that you find the idea so repulsive.” The Monster’s tone was as light and sing-song as ever. 

Harry still grimaced. “I can’t even cross the room right now without feeling like I’m crawling over a bed of nails. It’s not – You know I’ve never done this before, so stop looking at me like that! You have absolutely no right to make me feel guilty, asshole.”

“I’m not forcing you to have sex with me.”

“No, that’s just your mother’s bloody curse!” His voice hitched up an octave.

“My mother also seduced her husband via a love potion,” the Monster said, eyes dark. “You have commented on our less-than-romanticized version of romance often enough.” 

Maybe Harry should have expected something like this. The Monster hadn’t exactly been subtle about his … interest, considering he did quite literally consume via kisses from the start. 

Compared to love and minds and souls, a quick shag really should be quite easy. No strings required. His heart thudded so fast he half felt his pulse should be humming in his ears.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t thought about it, with them. When he had time to think, at any rate. 

Harry swallowed. “I thought you were about memories and the Beast was the one obsessed with body parts…”

“You’d probably give the old man cardiac arrest –” the Monster began, before shrinking back, eyes flashing, at the look the Nameless speared him with. It focused on Harry again. “Just invite me in before you die. I assume the possibility of what you may have to do is not worse than that?”

Harry hesitated – but he truly couldn’t go against that particular argument. He’d rather live, thanks. His gaze darted over scarlet lips, so at odds with how black-and-white the Monster remained otherwise.

“… I, uh, I invite you in?” He remembered himself quickly. “Just for tonight.” 

The Monster appeared at his side in an instant, fingers burning hot against the clammy chill of Harry’s cheek. 

“This would be the sleeping beauty part of the fairytale, right?” Harry tried to joke, swallowing hard as his gaze darted over the Monster’s mouth once more.

“I think I prefer you awake,” the Monster said, thumb tracing along his jaw. “You look terrified.”

“I’m not _terrified._ It’s just – um – it’s not really how I imagined my first time,” Harry managed.

“Well, at least we gave you roses.” 

Harry wheezed out a laugh, even as he scowled as pain lanced through him. “Don’t make me laugh – are you trying to kill me?”

“My apologies.” The Monster’s lips twitched. His eyes were infinitely hungry, dark as space. A hint of that black snake-tongue darted out from behind sharp teeth. 

“You don’t bite, do you?” Harry asked. “Because I’m not sure how much more blood I can stand to lose.” 

“I’ll save it for when you’re recovered,” the Monster said. The mattress dipped, as the Monster braced a knee on the edge, leaning over him. “So … may I?”

“You’re not just taking it?” Harry blinked. “The first time you slammed me against the wall and kissed me the second I was in the corridor.”

“There’s this idiot called Harry Potter, who preaches that it doesn’t count unless it’s offered. It’s not candles and silk sheets, but it’s the best I can do. Look at yourself, I’m not risking a failed kiss.” 

Well, that was one way to do romance. Harry’s throat thickened. 

“You said … I need to deal with the Beast first,” he wetted his lips. “Won’t there be … consequences, if we do this? Last time I messed up the order with you guys, Riddle escaped his portrait and I ended up getting kissed in the first place.”

“Yes,” the Monster said. “The ramifications will reflect on either the Beast or the Prophecy – most likely the Prophecy.”

“You mean, like … he won’t be chained up anymore?” Harry’s stomach plummeted. 

Considering the Prophecy tried to kill him yesterday, there was no way that could go down well. 

“You’re going to die if I don’t take this off you,” the Monster said. “You understand that, don’t you?” 

“I might not. You can’t know for su–"

“You will.” The Monster’s fingers tightened in his hair. “Don’t be an idiot.” 

Harry swallowed, staring up at the Monster as it shifted again, both knees now bracketing his hips. Hands rested on either side of his head. 

“You make something your own when you take it, don’t you?” His brow furrowed, veins aching. “Like Hermione heard her laugh coming out of your mouth. Wouldn’t –” well, wouldn’t that mean the Monster would take the consequences for the failed kiss into himself too? 

“Yes,” the Monster said. 

“You’d be hurting.” 

“I’m immortal. Unlike you, it probably wouldn’t kill me.”

Harry’s heart quickened. “Probably?” 

The Monster’s eyes narrowed. “Are you going to let me save your life or not?” 

Harry’s ears rang. The weight of the Monster’s body pressed blazingly hot against his hips as thighs dragged warm against his sides, chasing away the chill. 

It looked so _earnest,_ watching him with a carefully guarded expression in the gloom. Three fingers curled to twine into his hair as it waited – darkness personified. 

Saving Harry’s life, potentially at the cost of his own. 

Then again, he was the Riddle’s counterpart. The Riddle, who’d flung himself between Harry and the possessed Beast. 

Tom Riddle, who’d tried to warn him as the Past, and tried to kill him as the Prophecy. One man, fractured beyond torment, because he wanted to live forever. 

Now risking the possibility of that forever, however small the chance. For _him._

Harry reached up a shaking hand, smoothing his fingers along the porcelain contours of the Monster’s face, tracing the path of inky veins so visible on the surface. “Sometimes, you’re really not as bad as you pretend to be, are you?”

The Monster leaned down to kiss him.

Harry turned his head away, and it froze, hovering above him, lips ghosting along the corner of his mouth. Fingers tightened into the pillowcase beside his head, nails sharp enough that Harry heard the delicate fabric tear.

“What is it _now?”_ the Monster hissed. 

Harry exhaled a breath, feeling like he was going to be sick. He squeezed his eyes shut. “No.”

“No? What do you mean, _no?”_

“I mean _no_. I’m not just going to let you die instead of me.” 

The silence deafened him for a moment.

“I won’t die. Don’t be such a stubborn fool, for once in your life! This is probably the only time, _offering,_ that you’re off the hook for playing the noble hero. You don’t have to pretend to care about us.”

Harry blinked, chest squeezing. “I’m not … pretending anything.”

“You have a better chance of breaking the curse if we do this, is what I mean. It’s not the wrong move – well, there will be a fallout, because it’s out of order. But the Nameless can handle the Prophecy whilst I’m weakened. _You_ can’t do anything dead. Come morning, the Prophecy will probably try and have your corpse dragged and switched into the mainframe again. Look, I’m not that bad a kisser. I’ve absorbed a lot of different kisses –"

“I’m not talking about the fucking curse or your kissing abilities!” Harry rasped. “I’m talking about you.” 

The Monster looked like Harry had just slapped him in the face. It sat up, eyes narrowed as it stared down at him. “Have the thorns reached your brain?” 

Harry huffed, before grimacing as he nearly choked on his own blood, twisting on the bed. 

The Monster was off him in a heartbeat, wrapping an arm around his shoulders to help him sit up. 

“You heard the bit about how you’re going to die?”

Harry shrugged, leaning into the arm out of pure exhaustion. The Monster, to his surprise, drew him closer. Harry’s hand trembled in his lap. “Honestly, I figured I was going to die the first night. I was just hoping not to take anyone else with me.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Really, I wouldn’t be the best partner right now, anyway. Bit more likely to throw up on you – not exactly sexy.” He managed a smile. 

“You must have many friends in the village. Family. People who love you. You’re that type.” 

“My mother is a doll in Past’s portrait, and god knows what happened to my father.” 

“He picked a fight with the Nameless and is now a ghost in Past’s portrait,” the Monster said. 

Harry’s eyes opened up again, as he looked up at the Monster.  
“A ghost?” 

“Things with no name have no place in history,” the Monster said, stroking along his side. “Nothing to ground them. They’re ghosts. It’s what he does. They get lost in the darkness, and don’t find their way out.”

Harry’s insides twisted. 

“It would all be for nothing, if you died now,” the Monster said. “They were trying to make things better for those that followed them.”

Harry’s nails dug into his palms. “Fuck you. I’m trying to save you.” 

“Me? I’m a Monster – who quite literally feeds on anyone I get close to.”

“Just because names have power and you’ve been given that name, doesn’t mean it’s all you have to be,” Harry said. “Someone once told me that it’s our choices that define who we really are. We have a right to reject the names given to us. Voldemort did that, didn’t he?”

“I wasn’t asking for a defense of my character,” the Monster murmured, fingers slipping beneath his sweat-drenched shirt. “In our case, our names are … everything. You were right, when you told You-Know-Who that kissing me won’t magically change me or make me a better person. Even if you break the curse, I won’t become a Prince Charming. We never were. There was always a little bit of Monster in Tom Riddle. That’s why I exist.” 

“What are you trying to say?”

“True love is a joke. It creates exceptions, nothing more. Exceptions born of selfishness, because ultimately it is the desire to keep those you love that lead to them. Most people who sacrifice do it for those they love, because the thought of living without them is worse than what they are giving up. It is calculated logic, not altruism.”

Harry sighed. His head tilted to rest in the crook of the Monster’s neck, letting the shadows envelop him. “Love doesn’t have to be a sacrifice.” He closed his eyes again. “It can be acceptance. It doesn’t have to be about taking or giving anything, if you don’t want to be. Sometimes it’s just being with someone.”

“Beware the war when shadow meets light,” the Monster murmured. “I hate it when the bastard’s right. Clearly, we have horrible taste. There were so many better offerings than you.” 

Harry opened his mouth to protest, scowling, only for lips to crush against his. 

The Monster’s mouth was surprisingly soft. 

Fingers twined into his hair, the mattress dipping with added weight as the Monster shifted on top of him properly again, cupping his head. 

It was nothing like kissing the Nameless.

Despite the ferocity burning behind the Monster’s lips, it was pleasure, not pain, that spread through Harry’s body. Lips a soothing balm as they trailed over his jaw, and down along his throat. 

Harry forgot how to breathe. “You git, I said no.” 

“And I told you true love was a joke. Not making either of us happy, is it?” The Monster returned to hover above his mouth again, guiding him to lie back. “Just relax. It’s already started – too late to try and spare me now, hero.”

Harry glared at him. “Why are you trying so hard to save me? And what the hell does ‘beware the war when shadow meets light’ mean? I thought that was about the lot of you switching from day to night…”

“The shadow on the hill. I – we are creatures of darkness, night or day. How could you possibly come to the conclusion that any of us were light?” The Monster looked ready to roll his eyes, staring down at him. “Shadow _meets_ light.” 

“You’re implying _I’m_ light.” Harry’s mouth ran dry.

“All’s fair in love and war, my offering.”

Their lips met again, softer this time. 

By morning, the Monster had chased away the chill and the poison.

* * *

Harry awoke to an empty bed, and the sound of shattering glass. 

He blinked, head clear for the first time in what felt like forever. Nothing hurt – he was floating! 

And there was a rock in the middle of his bedroom. He sat up, glancing over to find a small hole in the window, splintering like a spider’s web. 

“We need to move,” the Beast said, _limping_ across his room without so much as looking at him, peering out the window. “Get dressed.”

Dawn spread across the horizon.

Harry’s heart hammered in his head. The rhythm was strong now, nothing like it had been in all the days before. It had worked, the Monster had really saved him.

He felt fantastic. 

The Beast, by contrast, looked absolutely dreadful. He’d always been pale, but now he was waxen, sickly, his movements the slow, withered movements of an old man stooped by age, unbearably frail.

There was a single petal left on the rose. 

“What the hell is going on?” Harry demanded, tugging the sheets up to cover his body. “Is the Monster okay?”

“He’s dying,” the Beast dismissed, as if it was nothing. “Your friends are here. _Move.”_

Harry scrambled to get dressed, as more stones clinked against the window. He hurried to stand next to the Beast, peering down into the struggling sunrise. 

The villagers roared at the gates, crowding around it. Screaming up at the house, weapons in hand. Too far away for Harry to make out faces, though he could pick out red hair clearly enough.

His mouth ran dry. “I don’t understand –" He froze as he caught sight of the Beast’s eyes . They shone pure white.

The Beast smiled, far too pleasantly, and seized hold of his arm. “Let’s go, Offering. I’m not dying for you.”

Harry yanked his arm back, recoiling. His blood boiled. 

“I’m not going anywhere with you, you spoil–" No, not spoiled. The Prophecy had never been spoiled, or cherished, by anyone. Harry gritted his teeth. “What the hell do you have against me?”

“I know the odds against you; that is enough,” the Prophecy said. “Time’s up, don’t you see? You’ve had your future, now it’s only fair that I have mine. You made your choice when you volunteered.”

Harry’s jaw clenched, and he stepped back as the the possessed Beast made another grab for him. 

“Look at him – _look_ –" He gestured at the Beast’s body. “I can help him!” 

“We don’t have time for this,” the Prophecy said. “They’re attacking me.” 

_Oh._

The Prophecy was wired to the house – and someone had just cracked a window throwing stones. Threat imminent, clawing and battering at the silver gates and the garden twisting wild and ferociously in defense. 

More than any of the others, the Prophecy was this house.

Still. 

“Give the Beast his heart, and I’ll come to you,” Harry said, breath ragged in his throat. “He needs it. The rose is almost dead, and he’s the clock. You’re breaking him!”

It ached to see Voldemort like that. Harry often called the man a bastard or variations thereupon, but he could acknowledge that seeing him so weak was … unnerving. It didn’t suit him. Voldemort – just like Nameless – was not supposed to be stripped of his power. 

And the Prophecy took from all of them, except the Monster. The Monster, who was no doubt half dead because of the kisses cursed, because of _Harry._

The Monster, who maybe could have stood against the Prophecy, rattling in its chains. 

The Prophecy stared at him. “The Beast’s heart keeps the house running.” The battery, where the Prophecy was the controller. 

Harry exhaled a breath, lest he do something he regretted. He couldn’t out-temper-tantrum a ten-year-old psychopath. “You want me to replace you in the circuit – you were never going to give him his heart back.” Bile burned in his mouth at the thought, at the _audacity_ of that. That the Prophecy would seize his future and condemn another’s, even if it didn’t have to. Even if it could save the Beast such pain.

If they hated everyone else, if they screwed him over, Harry could maybe understand. He wasn’t one of them. But the way they constantly snapped at and left each other for dead…

“Take both.” Harry squared his shoulders. “My heart in a box, and my body wired to your curse. Mind, body, soul. That’s what you’ve wanted from the start.”

Some sickening perversion of sacrifice, of the things given willingly in love. 

The Past wanted a friend. The Prophecy wanted its future, damn anything or anyone that got in its way – even versions of itself. 

White eyes considered him, colder than any child’s should ever be. 

“Harry, don’t.” 

He looked over to see the Riddle emerging from his portrait, the Nameless’ wand in hand. 

The Prophecy-Beast’s fingers flexed. “We had a deal, Riddle. I let you out of that painting, I can put you back into it too.” 

The rooms of the manor rattled, the letter opener rising from its place on the table.

Harry’s eyes darted between them, and in an instant he’d stepped between them, grabbing the letter opener from the air. “This isn’t the time for you to start fighting. The villagers will kill you!” 

After everything that had happened, the grief and the powerlessness stewing over the years, the toxic resentment against the Lord of the Manor who ruled over them and took without care or consequence … they’d claw this whole damn place down to the ground with their bare hands if they thought they could.

“I am not living under his thumb for the rest of my life,” the Riddle said. “You wouldn’t either, Harry. It’s the offering that matters, the choice. Not fate or _prophecy.”_ He spat the name like it was the curse itself. 

Shit.

“That’s not the Prophecy, that’s still the Beast. You go for him, the Nameless will go for you. You’ll obliterate each other!”

“And the winner gets you,” the Riddle said, eyes dark as the Monster’s ever were. “A fair prize, I would say.”

Harry swallowed. “I’m not a prize. Look – let me go to the gate, show them I’m okay, and persuade them to leave us alone. We need more time.”

“You’re not leaving,” the Prophecy said. “You said you would give me everything.” 

He still needed the Beast and the Prophecy – but what, did he slice his heart out with the letter opener? It wasn’t a gamble he wanted to risk just on the off chance!

His gaze fixed on the ruined rose again. So ridiculously fragile, with even its barrier of thorns withering. Wasting away. It would never survive another fight between these two. 

And then it would all be over. Not just for him, but for everyone. 

There was no time! 

“I don’t want you to hurt them! The villagers have done nothing to you!”

“They’re attacking me!” The letter opener wrenched out of Harry’s hand, dragging a hiss from him as it sliced his palm open. 

“You attacked them first!”

“They would have done it if I didn’t,” the Prophecy said. “If they weren’t scared and kept in line. It’s _you._ You’ve ruined everything! They think they can hurt me because of you – you make us weak. You’ve already slain the Monster!”

Harry recoiled. “Slain the Monster?” It came out no louder than a whisper. The last kiss tingled on his lips. Weakened? What was this? “I’m not the one with the lethal kiss.”

“Aren’t you?” The Prophecy glared at him. 

“I didn’t – I never meant –" Harry’s breath caught. He glanced at the Riddle for help, for _something._

“No one ever means to fall in love with anybody,” the Riddle said softly. “The world would be a much kinder place if we could control that.” 

“Where is the Monster?” 

“Harry –"

 _“Where is he?”_ He grabbed the letter opener out of the air again. 

“You haven’t figured it out by now? He’s the wild card.”

Harry stared at the Riddle, brow furrowed, mouth dry. He shook his head. He had no clue at all anymore. 

“The flickering?” the Riddle said, taking a step closer to him. “The switching, night and day?”

“I know you’re the Monster’s counterpart,” Harry said. 

“Do the rest of us flicker like he does?” the Riddle asked, reaching out, stroking a thumb along his cheek. 

“We don’t have time for this,” the Prophecy said. “We had a deal. You can have him for all of eternity for all I care – let’s just finish this, before the rabble break down the gate.”

“Just spit it out without the riddles, for once,” Harry’s teeth gritted. Hands tightening around the Riddle’s wrist. “What does he mean, I slayed the Monster? He’s immortal, he –"

“Have you ever played cards, Harry? What does the wild card do?” 

“It … represents the highest card, or any card that you want it to.” His gut plunged, twisting, and he wasn’t sure why. 

“And you just played him. Card played, card leaves deck. Never quite so finicky a game as love, is there?”

“What do you mean, card leaves deck?” Harry’s head spinning. Of course, he knew what that _meant,_ but … he must be misunderstanding something, because the Monster couldn’t be…

“The Monster never lived in the first place,” the Prophecy snapped. “He’s an abomination. A wild card, that triggered this whole game. That’s why he flickers. ” 

Harry laughed. “He definitely felt real last night.”

“We play the card of the Monster. It is what we are – there was always a bit of Monster in Tom Riddle, he told you that,” the Riddle said, studying him. “He absorbs his victims. Reflects them. Two jokers in a pack: ours, which we played as stated. And yours – which you played last night.”

“Nope,” Harry said, shaking his head. “You’re the Monster’s counterpart. What, are you going to tell me the Beast isn’t real next? How do I piece together a puzzle if one of the pieces doesn’t exist?”

“We never said he’s not real. We said he was never alive,” the Riddle said. 

Harry’s stomach plunged, mouth dry. “He must be somewhere.” 

“Everything is somewhere,” the Prophecy said. “He is powerless now – that is all that matters.”

Harry took a step back from the arm that grabbed at him, jerking away from the Riddle.  
“Would undoing the curse bring him back?”

The Prophecy’s eyes narrowed. “I accept your deal, Harry Potter. Give me what you promised me.”

The gate clattered sickeningly loud outside the window.

The world, despite daybreak, hung in some eerie twilight. 

Harry nodded, squaring his shoulders. The Prophecy’s response settled it. “Sorry, no deal,” he said. “The game’s changed a bit, hasn’t it? I said I’d save him – I’m not leaving him behind now.” 

A smirk crossed the Riddle’s face. 

_“I will have my future.”_ The Prophecy stepped closer. The floor began to splinter beneath Harry’s feet, the darkness plunging absolute.

The Riddle aimed the wand, raising a brow, one hand settling on Harry’s shoulder. “You heard our offering. He said no.”

The yells intensified outside, and Harry heard the tramp of feet, of cries. 

“Then you’re asking for it too,” the Prophecy said. 

The Beast crumpled to the floor.

* * *

“I’m fine,” Voldemort said, shoving Harry’s hand away as he hobbled down the corridor. “We have bigger problems to deal with. The gate will not last long. Give me my wand.”

Harry seized his arm, yanking the Beast to a halt. 

“You can’t hurt them. They’re just scared.”

“People do terrible things when they’re ‘just scared’,” the Riddle said, eyes dark. “You’ve met the Prophecy. It does not excuse them.” 

Harry’s gaze moved over the lone rose petal again. It was turning brown, curling at the edges. Nausea clawed up his throat – torn – so close now, maybe, and yet… 

He couldn’t see the villagers hurt. And they _would_ be hurt if they continued. Could he talk to them? Was there time? 

Time…

“Trade with me.” 

The Beast ground to a halt, eyes narrowing. “Excuse me?”

“My heart for the rose,” he said, wetting his lips. “You need a heart. I need more time, so give me the clock.”

“Are you so eager to be in crippling pain?” Riddle frowned. “You just finished nearly dying.” 

Harry stared the Beast down. 

“You can’t be serious,” the Riddle said. “If you’re feeling _guilty_ about the Monster –"

“Deal,” Voldemort said. Harry knew he’d never be able to resist.

The house shook ominously around them. The first of the villagers managed to scramble their way over the gate.

The Riddle sighed, and pressed the wand into his hand. “I’ll want this back, before the end, Harry Potter. But you’re going to need it.”

* * *

“There,” the Beast said. “How are you feeling?”

Harry had the worst ideas in the world, he was sure of it. He could have gone without this, especially after all the Monster had sacrificed to save him. 

The colour drained from his face, as he examined the tender stalk in his chest. The gaping hole of it, that made Harry’s stomach lurch to look at.

Somehow, he’d expected the rose to replenish itself, with a new life to leech on. 

A healthy flush crept along the Beast’s cheeks, new strength flexing through his bones. 

“Like the Nameless has given me the kiss of death again,” Harry said, cheerily enough. Or, at least, he did his best with it. “Help me up, will you?”

He couldn’t give up now. He couldn’t stop and rest – he could rest once the villagers were safe, and the curse was broken. He’d come this far. 

Voldemort’s arm wrapped around him, fingers pressed vice-like against his hip. Harry had forgotten how strong the Beast was, when they first met. Strong enough to hold him entirely mobilized, not fading enough to be shoved away even in the form of some feral, slavering creature.

How long had it been since this all started? Harry had no idea. He’d stopped counting.

“What are you going to do about the Prophecy?” the Beast murmured, in his ear. “The rose weakens you. You have little time. What do you need of me?” 

Harry could hear the villagers screaming, hear the house creaking and groaning as if it was screaming too. He swallowed. “The Prophecy? I was still wondering what the hell I was supposed to be doing about you –”

“I told you what you needed to do about me a long time ago, Harry,” the Beast’s lips twitched. “I want your heart. You just gave it to me, albeit not in the manner I expected.”

Harry blinked at him. “I’m still pretty sure that was supposed to be bloody metaphorical.” 

No, not the time to concentrate on that. 

“Stop the Riddle from hurting anyone, please.” He craned up to press a kiss to the new warmth of the Beast’s cheek. “I need to see to a certain Prophecy.”

“Oh, don’t worry, Harry.” The Beast’s fingers tightened on his shoulder. “He’ll be coming for you. The Past has bought you some time.” 

Harry swallowed, hard.

The Riddle’s screams shattered the air.

* * *

Harry hurried through the crumbling hallways of Riddle Manor, heart slamming in his throbbing chest. He felt every breath, ragged. 

He burst into the main entrance room, flooded with villagers who all surrounded Riddle. Elegant, handsome, every inch a young lord but for the violence branded across his expression. Eyes wild as the Beast’s ever were, backing up. 

The Beast shifted with a sickening crack, and the next second leapt down the stairs, scattering the gathered villagers as he coiled, snarling, at Riddle’s side. 

Smoke coiled heavy on the air, knives glinted in hands, and thin sunshine shafted through the kicked-in doors, once grand. 

The ground shook beneath them, door slamming. 

Faces Harry once knew twisted unrecognizable with hate, as they advanced on the pair, hurling abuse and accusations. 

Harry shouted three times to get himself heard, before the wand sounded a colossal bang. 

The room silenced as everyone turned to look at him. 

He gasped for breath, before squaring his shoulders, and beginning to walk slowly down the staircase. It would have been a fairytale, he was sure, if everyone wasn’t trying to kill each other and didn’t look so horrified. 

“Harry … oh god, your chest…” He’d thought he would never hear Ginny’s voice again. “What did they do to you?”

He’d assumed seeing everyone again would be a relief. Right now, it really wasn’t.

“I’m fine,” he said. “And I offered.”

That did nothing to appease anyone. 

“Has it put you under some kind of spell?” Ron demanded. 

Harry moved carefully to stand next to Riddle and Beast, laying a hand on the Beast’s head as he bristled – ready to go for the throat. 

“No,” he said. “I’m okay. It’s not been so bad.” Okay, so it had been pretty awful at times, but he was nearly done with all of that. “Just … please leave, alright? I’ve got this.”

The Prophecy could be upon them at any minute. 

“Leave?” Ginny said. “Harry, we’re not leaving you here. He’s – the things it’s done, curse or no curse –”

The Beast’s snarl drowned out the rest of her sentence. 

Harry could imagine it all too well, imagine the blood-pumping need for justice simmering through them, at explosion point. 

He splayed a hand on Riddle’s chest too, as Tom stepped forward, painfully aware of how outnumbered they were. 

“You heard the boy,” Riddle said. “He’s choosing us.” 

“No, he just feels he needs to stay to protect us! That’s not a choice!” Ginny’s voice cracked. “Harry, please. You don’t have to stay here anymore.”

Many other voices chimed in, most of them unable to take their eyes off his chest. On how the shadow was clearly killing him, on how the sun shone brighter outside, that he’d done enough already. 

But it was only with the lifting of the curse that they were brave enough to attack the manor, wasn’t it? A stirring, vicious restlessness. A mob of terror, and the bared teeth of all that had been lost. 

They wouldn’t listen to a word he had to say.

“Please!” Harry held shaking hands into the air. “You have to leave. Now. You can’t bring weapons into the house like this!”

The whole manor trembled. 

Harry suspected that if the Prophecy had the power it once did, when all of this started, that it would have possessed all of the house’s inhabitants and massacred everyone already. 

A child’s eerie humming floated above the crest of the argument, the shift of weapons and demands.

The soft singing of a lullaby, growing louder and louder. 

The villagers stilled. 

“Is that … a child?” Mrs Weasley asked.

“Please go,” Harry said. His chest constricted, fingers tightening around the wand. 

“Why is there a child? Did it –”

Harry aimed the wand at the crowd with a shaking hand, chin jutted up. “Leave, now. Or you will all be _dead.”_

The doors on the left side of the house burst open. Chains rattled and clinked along the floor, swallowing the pad of small feet strolling to look over the frozen pandemonium below. 

The stench of blood followed, the Past limping along behind. 

Harry’s teeth gritted.

The Prophecy’s head barely reached over the top of the banister – a small child, and those blazing white eyes as it stared down at them at all, as if in judgment. Smiling. 

It lifted one scarlet hand, fingers clenched around the Beast’s heart. 

Harry’s chest twinged, eyes widening as the thorns in his chest began to stir. Constricting around the rose, instead of protecting it and vines curling up to his throat. 

The Riddle seized him before he could hit his knees. “Stop it!” Tom hissed.

“Stand down or I’ll kill him,” the Prophecy said. “Then none of you can have him.” 

Some of the villagers stepped back, seemingly questioning coming here. 

“Oh no, don’t leave!” The Prophecy squeezed the heart, blood dripping to the floor as Harry cried out. “I haven’t played with this many people in ages! It’s so nice to meet you all.” 

“Harry –” Many of the Weasleys moved to rush to his side, only for the Beast’s hackles to flare as he snapped at them, missing Ginny’s throat by inches. 

“Stay back!” Harry managed. “Just – stop moving.” 

“See, the Offering knows what to do,” the Prophecy said. “The Offering has spoken. Listen to him.” 

The darkness smothered the manor. A visceral darkness, that clung to every crevice and clogged up Harry’s lungs. 

The walls twisted and warped, bones grasping out from beneath the floorboards as the Prophecy raised a hand. 

“Leave them alone,” Harry said. 

“You should have taken the deal when you had the chance,” it said. “And not been mean.” The Prophecy swung its gaze over the Beast. “Bring him to me.” 

The Beast didn’t move, scarlet eyes flashing. Teeth baring. 

The Prophecy ‘s face didn’t change, as the dead clawed at the screaming living. 

Harry, with nausea, recognized some of them as the rotting corpses of the offerings of years before. He shoved the Riddle’s supporting hand away, stepping towards the Prophecy for himself. 

“No,” Ginny whispered. “Harry, don’t … you can’t…”

He smiled at her. “It’s alright,” he said. “Trust me.” He shot Riddle and Beast a look at the words too.

He moved up the stairs, a white-knuckled grip on the railing, the wand still clutched in his hand. 

He stopped beside the Past, kneeling to examine him, squeezing the young boy’s shoulder – ignoring the Prophecy completely. “Alright?” 

The Past nodded, glancing at the Prophecy. 

Harry watched the shadows on the right side of the house stir, unseeing eyes bloody in the gloom. _Nameless._ Harry nodded once, exhaling a breath. 

The Past – a friend. 

The Riddle – someone to talk to, connect with. 

The Nameless – recognition.

_The Monster…_

The Beast – a heart. 

The Prophecy – a future. 

Tormented fragments, twisted like puppets in the games of one bored child with no care for anybody except itself. 

He finally looked at the Prophecy – cupped its cheek without fear. “Is this really the future you want?” 

One more time.

It recoiled from him. 

“I will not spend the rest of my life in the nursery,” it hissed. “You had your chance. It’s _my turn!”_

Harry briefly squeezed his eyes shut, letting his hand drop before he straightened. “Tom,” he said to the Past. “Thank you.” 

“No.” The Past shook his head. “No! The future is always informed by the Past – I told you, you can’t – you – I won’t let you.” 

The Prophecy laughed. “Come, Harry Potter. Play with me.”

Harry glanced down to the entrance hall below – not needing the Prophecy’s eyes to see what would happen this time. The bloodshed, and the massacre, whether by the Prophecy’s hands, or the Beast’s claws, or the Riddle. 

None of them would forgive a threat. 

“No!” He heard Ginny’s voice behind him. “No, you can’t have him. Not again.” Her voice caught. 

He heard the pounding of footsteps on the stairs, like a distant dream. 

Turned slowly, saw how the Beast lunged for her throat the second she moved. 

But not before she threw the knife. 

Harry didn’t think. 

He didn’t even do it for the Prophecy, really. Maybe he was just too used to trying to save people, and maybe the child deserved a future. If only they had someone who believed in a better one.

That would be a nice explanation. 

But Harry didn’t think. 

He lunged in the way of the knife as it hurtled towards the Prophecy, barely feeling it as it plunged into his stomach. 

Everything froze. His ears rang. He wasn’t aware of hitting his knees, or of the Prophecy staring at him, wide-eyed, knuckles still bloody as it let the Beast’s heart fall to the floor. 

_“Oh,”_ Harry said, softly. 

The last petal hit the floor at the same time he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
> **[The Monster](http://paper-ramblings.tumblr.com/post/117736120584/calicium-the-monster-fanart-dedicated-to-the)** by Calicium


	13. The Ferrying Fee

The Nameless materialized at his side in a second, cradling his head as Harry gasped in raw breaths.

"You saved my life…" the Prophecy said. "You hate me. Why would you help me?"

"Everyone deserves a –" Harry began.

"No inspirational speeches." The Nameless squeezed his hand. The sounds of battle tore beneath the balcony, the screams, the howls of the Beast, the clash of knives. "Now, Harry. It's time. My name…"

Blood bubbled at the corner of Harry's mouth. "You are Tom...Marvolo...Riddle. Lord Voldemort. Always … always both."

White light filled the hall, blinding the whole world away.

* * *

It hurt. It hurt more than anything Tom had ever felt before – burning through his chest and swallowing him whole.

His head spun. The last fifty years of his life coalesced, the memories knitting fresh through his mind as the shards weaved together again.

So many offerings, that didn't really offer at all. People who tried, and people who looked at him, them, like all they ever could be was a Nameless Monster, a Beast, judged by everything that came before, to never be understood. Like his future was hopeless – like all he was and could be, was an adversary to be destroyed.

It was a funny thing to become aware so abruptly of a lifetime of one's own loneliness, even as the thought of relying on anyone else still tasted like poison in his mouth.

His ears rang. He was nothing, and everything, and then he was TomMarvoloRiddleIamLordVoldemort.

He panted for breath against the floors of the manor, examining his body with reverence. Slowly, a smile lit his face, eyes shining. "You did it Harry! You actually did it!"

None of the villagers mattered anymore, as he scrambled to Harry's side, kneeling beside him.

"Harry?"

A hole still gaped in the boy's chest. No heart – not even a rose.  
His eyes were as glassy as a doll's. Empty, unseeing.

Tom's heart stopped. "Harry? Offering? Harry Potter?" He shook him, hard. "Harry James Potter." Was this payback? Some kind of joke? It wasn't funny by any means...

Nothing.

The walls of the manor continued to crumble, even as a true dawn burst over Tom's skin. Warm, nourishing sunlight that so many of them hadn't seen for decades now.

His chest shriveled, mind racing.

Harry wasn't dead. There was absolutely no way that Harry Potter could be dead now, after everything. He just needed…

All the stories had the prince waking his love with a kiss.

He wasted no time in crushing his lips to Harry's, stroking dark strands, melting in relief.

Nothing.

He stared down at Harry, picking up the withered rose petal from the floor. It disintegrated at his touch.

Tom's stomach lurched. He leaned down to kiss Harry again, hands trembling through his hair, caressing his cheek.

Was it because there was no time? That the magic of the curse had faded away?

Or was it because, even now, whole, his soul and his heart was too rotten for such a thing as true love.

Bile flooded his mouth.

"Harry, please." He tightened his fingers on the pliant body, every raw piece of his soul aching.

"And they all lived happily ever after."

The voice drifted from behind him, the familiarity of it spreading warm through his blood. Harry's voice.

Tom whipped around so fast that he got a crick in his neck, as the manor continued to fall to ruin around him. Then his stomach plummeted, jaw clenching. "Eurydice."

The young boy seemed so innocent on first glance, messy-haired and green-eyed. Those lovely green eyes, that had expressed so much from the second Tom first saw them, when his offering stepped through the gate – as if one person could really feel that much.

Eurydice lugged the tattered portrait of the Offering behind him. It seemed faded, the colours of the painting bleeding out onto the floor.

Tom had never hated anyone more in his life than this mockery of what he'd lost, especially as green eyes flashed scarlet.

He turned his gaze back to his Harry, body broken on the floor. Blood smeared across Tom's hands, along his lips. "What do you want?" he asked.

"It's not about what I want," Eurydice said.

"Then what is it?" he spat.

"Mind, body and soul." The child moved closer to him, head tilted with an almost birdlike curiosity. Small fingers threaded through Tom's hair. "The body of the offering. The mind of the offering...and the soul of the offering. Those were always your demands of love."

"I don't understand."

"How shocking. How novel. You understand so much about love, I simply cannot comprehend how the complexities of the situation are surpassing you," Eurydice said.

He glared.

"The mind of the offering," Eurydice tapped the ruined portrait. "The inversion that physically reflects what is happening to his corporeal body." It glanced down at Harry on the floor.

Tom's mouth dried. "And...the soul of the offering?"

Both the portrait of the Offering and Harry's body were ruined by all that had happened.

"When you love somebody, it can be said you give them part of your soul," Eurydice murmured. Green eyes flashed scarlet again. Tom froze.

He surged to his feet in a moment, fists clenched, heart hammering in his chest. He'd forgotten how that felt – a heart. Wasn't sure he liked it, when it felt like thorns plunged through him all the same. "Can you bring him back?"

"That is not for me to say," Eurydice said, smiling. "But I can give you the opportunity to have him, if you want to look back."

"I'd turn to stone."

Eurydice shrugged. "It's your choice. He did his part, you can leave. Go and be Lord Voldemort, there is nothing stopping you anymore. He gave you yourself back already, how much do you really need some mudblood boy who was stupid enough to die for you?"

Voldemort lashed out in the space of a heartbeat, the slap cracking across the manor house. His hand throbbed, as the child's cheek bloomed as red as a rose petal.

Eurydice grinned back at him, eyes gleaming, running his tongue across his teeth.  
"Love can be poison, can't it? But it can also save him." The child held out a hand out to him, waggling his fingers. "What would you do for love, Tom Marvolo Riddle?"

Tom hoisted Harry's body into his arms, cradling him close, and followed Eurydice into his painting.

* * *

Wool's Orphanage loomed grey and uninviting in the rain. Although, to be fair to Wool's Orphanage, it would have loomed grey and uninviting on even the bluest of summer days.

Tom stiffened, grip tightening as Harry vanished from his arms.  
His clothes plastered to his skin in a matter of seconds.

Was this a punishment? Had he done something wrong? Would Harry appear somewhere?  
His heart quickened as he strode towards Eurydice, hands bared as if he still had claws.  
"Where is he?" he demanded. "You promised –"

"He died," Eurydice said. "And now you must recover him."

"How?"

Eurydice merely smiled at him, walking forwards into the orphanage and vanishing.

Tom's nails dug into his palms again as he exhaled a breath. Warily, he followed – studying his surroundings. Feeling the memories twist visceral in his gut, blurring behind his eyes.

The wall Dennis Bishop shoved him into. The crevice from which he first heard Billy Stubbs call him a freak.

How the hell was he supposed to recover anything of Harry here? Harry would never have seen such a grim a place as this, and no heart so pure could have been in these walls.

His eyes flashed.

He moved through the corridors, dodging the ghosts of children. Shoulders tensing still at the clink of gin bottles from Mrs Cole's office.

Of course, he found his way to his old room, empty even in memory as he pushed the creaking door open. Dust tickled his nose, a chill in his spine.

He'd thought he'd never have to see this place again.

Everything looked as it always was...utterly without Harry Potter. This was useless! He had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

Eurydice appeared on his bed, tossing black pebbles in the air.

Tom's eyes narrowed, as he considered his options. "How am I supposed to find Harry here?" Was he supposed to be under the bloody bed or something?

"Infuriating, isn't it?" Eurydice said.

"You're forcing me to look back at my past, to turn me to stone. You're punishing me."

"You let most of the world believe you were stone anyway. Maybe it's fitting."

Tom nearly went for the brat's throat. "You are nothing like Harry. Harry wouldn't do this – what type of trick are you?"

"Try the wardrobe."

Tom wrenched open the closet doors, not flinching at the dead rabbit hanging from the clothes rack. At the bottom, rested a familiar box. He glanced at Eurydice, who bloody beamed at him again.

He pulled the box out, removing the lid.

A ring. A diary. A locket. A cup. A diadem. A snake's tooth. A beating heart that smeared the items bloody.

His hand hovered over them, not sure what he was supposed to do with this.  
"Is this supposed to be my riddle?" he asked.

"That is your life," Eurydice said. "Life or death, there is always a fee. A ferrying fee, so to speak. You demanded your payments, I have mine."

"You want me to give you one of these tokens? Turning me to stone isn't bloody payment enough?"

"You want an offerings body, mind, soul and heart...demanding the memories of their first kiss or several fingers is just an extra then?" Eurydice returned.

Tom's jaw clenched, fingers flexing at his sides.  
"This isn't my heart," he said, after a moment.

He'd spent fifty years with his heart sitting in a glass box in his lap, of course he would recognize it. This wasn't his heart.

"No, it's not," Eurydice said.

Tom studied it for a moment, head tilted. His fingers tightened around the box. "It's Harry's." Did that mean Harry's heart was his to give as he pleased?

A grin crossed his lips, eyes gleaming.

Eurydice tossed a pebble at him. "Don't smile like that, it's terrifying. And yes, you can give his heart away as the fee. He will live. You will live without repercussion."

Then that seemed the obvious choice. By far.  
There had to be some kind of catch, it was too easy.

He stroked his fingers over the pulsating organ, squashing the hunger that still flared in his mouth.

"And Harry? Will he face repercussions?"

"Obviously, he won't have a heart. Metaphorically speaking."

Tom still couldn't say he was convinced that was a repercussion so much as a gift.

Did Harry really need a heart? Clearly, someone could live just fine without a heart. He'd managed fine, so long as the actual physical heart was there it wasn't like he'd be in pain.

And wasn't Tom sacrificing himself enough by risking turning into stone for the boy?  
What was he supposed to do, give up his own heritage? His own power? He'd give his own heart happily enough, but apparently that wasn't an option.

Or...his nose wrinkled. "You could take my heart instead."

"The price is the price."

"I'm negotiating."

"The price is the price."

Tom's eyes narrowed. Eurydice smiled no longer, watching him in silence, head tilted to one side. There was something in those breathtakingly familiar eyes, as if Harry had any right to hold him under judgment. He'd made his choice.

"He does not love me, so it's not as if he really needs his heart," Voldemort said. He didn't think he'd be able to stomach Harry giving his heart to somebody else, like that red-headed girl in his memories.

Oh no. If he couldn't have his offerings heart, why should anyone else get to have so precious a treasure?

"No, he doesn't," Eurydice said. "Not yet."

Tom turned the snake fang over in his hand, eyes tight with the way Eurydice looked at him. That this Harry looked at him. "...Will he ever?" Could anyone ever?

Eurydice's expression didn't change – it looked unnatural on Harry's face, let alone a child Harry's. "Make your choice and find out. A better question might be...what do you love him for?"

Tom scowled. Reached into the box, and paid his fee.

* * *

Harry's head throbbed with pain. He blinked blearily into focus, blood drying sticky on his forehead.

"Harry! Harry? Are you alright?" Ron's face loomed above him, along with many others.

Harry grimaced, mind racing. The last thing he remembered was the villagers attacking Riddle manor, the knife searing straight through his heart. His hand patted along his chest, expecting some kind of gaping hole. "What happened?"

Instead, a gold and black ring hung on a chain around his neck.

"You fell from the statue, mate," Ron said.

"I've told you a thousand times not to climb it," someone else said.

Statue? What bloody statue? None of this made sense! But Harry followed their gestures to the stone looming above them.

His mouth ran dry, eyes widening.

They were all there – Past, Prophecy, Riddle, Monster, Beast, Nameless. Frozen in the rock, the centerpiece of Little Hangleton's square.

Did that mean...was Tom dead?

It felt like thorns were constricting around his chest, gouging through his ribcage, all over again.  
"But the curse…"

"Curse?" Ginny's brow furrowed, head tilting.

There were murmurs of 'that's a story', 'how hard did he hit his head?' 'Are you sure you're alright?'

Harry couldn't take his eyes off the statues. His heart slammed, aching.

Tom had been a git, and so many people had died because of him, but...well, he'd sort of been Harry's git by the end?

"He saved me…"

"What?" Ron peered at his face. "Look, can you stand? We need to get you to Madame Pomfrey."

Nausea bubbled in his throat, as he stood shakily. Still staring at the statue.

Tom wasn't one for the sacrifice play. If Harry had learned anything about him, he just wasn't. But by the end...one final grand sacrifice didn't make up for everything that had happened in the last fifty years.

But Tom had made the sacrifice for him.

Harry's jaw clenched – and god, why were the corners of his eyes stinging? His throat thickened.

"Harry?" Ginny touched his shoulder. They all clamoured around him – too much, too little air. People he'd never even seen or heard of before, the whole village thriving with people.

Lit in sunlight so bright that it burned him...he'd never even known that the sun could shine so bright, that the grass could burst so lush and verdant out of the ground. That the flowers could bloom for more than a scarce, withering couple of weeks.

And Tom Riddle wasn't there to see any of it.

Voices swarmed around him, but he couldn't hear a word. Harry's ears rang. He touched a hand to his forehead, fingers coming back crimson. Stained with blood.

"Don't worry," Ginny tried a grin at him. "I still think you look handsome."

"You're very pale," someone fussed. "Do you need to sit down?"

Harry's knees wobbled, jellied. He squared his shoulders, because if he somehow survived the Riddle House, he was not swooning now. That was ridiculous.

Apparently the Kisses Cursed was just a story.

* * *

"Harry, dear – oh my, what happened to your forehead?" Someone asked.

God knew who they were, Harry just smiled and nodding at everyone at this point. Trying to remember how to breathe.

"It's bloody wicked, isn't it?" Ron grinned. "Looks like a lightning bolt!"

Harry smoothed his fringe down over his face as all the patrons – it looked like the Hanged Man, but the sign outside said the Three Broomsticks and the Hanged Man had never been this cheery – stared at him.

There was much discussion over the lightning bolt scar. Harry wanted to shrink through the floorboards, somewhere quiet where he could absorb everything that had happened.

"Some young gentleman was looking for you," the barmaid – Rosie, or something like that – seemed to remember her original comment as she slid them lemonade over the counter.

Harry apparently had change in his pockets, Ron (unsurprisingly, at least some things didn't change) had none. Either way, the glass cooled wonderfully against his throbbing forehead.

He glanced up at the words, opening his eyes again.

"What?"

"A gentleman?" Ron snorted. "Since when do you know any strange gentlemen?"

Harry's breath quickened, barely daring to hope. "What did he look like? Did he leave a name?"

"I told him he'd find you at the statue," Rosie – Rosmerta – said.

Harry surged to his feet, whilst Ron's brow furrowed all over again, staring at him.

"He left this for you," she continued, reaching behind the counter.

Harry stopped, chest heaving as she held out a flower. A single rose. Blooming scarlet and lovely, complete with the thorns that pricked sharp against his thumb as he accepted it.

Someone made some comment on "ooh Potter's got an admirer."  
Harry swallowed thickly, lightheaded.

"Excuse me – I need to go – sorry."

"There's no point," Draco Malfoy said, an infuriatingly knowing look in his eyes. "Besides, haven't you heard the news of the week? Where have you been?" Something mocking to the tone, to the twist of his lips. "The Lord of the Manor is throwing a ball tonight. Any strange young gentlemen are bound to be there. It's the event of the season."

Harry's heart stopped.

* * *

Harry stood before the open gates of Riddle manor, feeling absolutely ridiculous. He smoothed down the lines of his suit, and struggled to flatten his hair.

His hair, unsurprisingly, didn't stay put. At least some things in the world didn't change.

Apparently, the Lord of the Manor was very rarely actually at his manor, and even more rarely threw parties. Especially parties for all the villagers in his area.

Apparently, the family was very private, and very little was heard about them. Ever.

Unlike on his first trip, all the lights were on and bathed a neatly trimmed garden with their radiance. He didn't feel watched. The darkness seemed too light – he had no idea how anyone slept when it was always so light.

He wiped his clammy hands on his trousers and squared his shoulders.

"Harry?" Ginny called back, brow furrowed. "Are you coming or not?"

He walked through the winding path through the garden, no longer needing to pick his way around a writhing mass of vines and rose bushes.

Yet, maybe he was wrong, but he could have sworn that magic still throbbed in the air. That one coy vine twirled as he watched it, before stilling. Maybe it was the wind.

Fairylights illuminated the way, shimmering in the moonlight. It looked more like Prince Charming's palace than the Beast's Lair.

Harry didn't quite know what to do with that.

The entrance room gleamed, polished from floor to ceiling. It reminded Harry of the manor he'd seen in the Riddle's portrait, before the curse ever happened. Which made sense, now.

Except it had happened.

Harry caught himself rubbing his chest.

The ballroom – the room he'd eaten in, during his stay – spread huge and magnificent before them too, soon enough. A diamond chandelier sparkled above them, dappling shards of light across the crowds milling around.

Chiffon and silk and fine fabrics, feathers and beads and carefully knotted ties.  
It was more grandeur than Harry had ever seen. Ever. More colour too.

In the village, all clothes had been darned and re-used to death. Rags. At least, in the village he'd grown up in. This seemed a different world.

Harry couldn't stop his gaze from roving the crowd in search of their host. For dark or scarlet eyes, for a pale serpentine figure or the suave handsomeness of Riddle. He wetted his lips.

His breath lodged in his throat.

"Beautiful, isn't it? Do you want to dance?" Ginny asked, squeezing his hand. "Lots of other people are."

He wanted a drink.

"Sure."

* * *

The dancers swirled too hot and cramped around him, faces flashing and the music floating through the cavernous space.

It overwhelmed him. Sweat beaded Harry's hairline, shoulders tensing more and more every second he didn't manage to spot Tom among the crowds.

Too many people. Far too many people, all chattering by drinks tables, or by the buffet spread as gorgeous as Harry's own dining experiences at the manor.

He needed air.

A hand pressed into his arm, interrupting his current, nauseating dance.

"Do you mind if I cut in?"  
He would have recognized the voice anywhere, and Lavender looked a little starstruck.  
Heat rushed to Harry's stomach.

"Of course," Lavender breathed a smile. "I'd be honoured –"  
Her face dropped when arms wrapped around Harry's waist and stepped him smoothly into a continued waltz, fingers gripping his own tight as they spun away.

Lips pressed warm against his ear, dark curls brushing his cheek. "Hello, my offering."

Harry could hear the smirk in the words.

"I'm not quite sure what to call you these days," he replied, heart slamming in his chest. "Unless there are five more of you stashed in a room upstairs."

The man looked older than the Riddle, and younger than the Nameless. Pale as the Beast, and scarlet eyed, with those long fingers that Harry first saw. Face shaped like the Riddle's, aristocratic and handsome. Dark hair like the Riddle's.

Harry's head spun.

"My lord in public, or Lord Voldemort. You may call me Tom, privately," Riddle said. His arm pressed firmly against Harry's back, and the scent of some expensive cologne wafted in Harry's noise.

The Monster had smelled like...like the forbidden forest.

"What happened?" Harry hated his voice for cracking. "I...everything's different. There was a knife, there –"

"Breathe, Harry," Tom said, tightening his grip.

"I died."

"Yes."

"The statue in the village square…"

"To look back is to turn to stone," Tom murmured. "But now is not the time to talk about such things."

"I thought solving the riddle was supposed to leave me with less questions."

Riddle's laugh rumbled through his chest, and the room twirled around them. Blurring as he tightened his grip on the...man. He was a man now, wasn't he?

Harry had done it, he'd solved the curse on Riddle Manor.  
Everything felt surreal. Maybe he was dreaming, comatose, dribbling mad bound to a nursery bed as shadows spread and his heart beat in a glass cage. "You sent me a rose."

"Did you like it?"

"I need air."

Voldemort frowned at him as he pulled away from the dance, to weave through the crowds of people.

Harry headed for the garden, for the fresh air and the moonlight which still seemed so pure and strange a thing.

He could see his room from outside – the only light in the house that was off.

The cool night rattled through his chest with each breath, as he fled the soft fairylights and the scent of that cologne.

Even outside, the sounds of the waltz drifted sweet and melodious through the undergrowth.

Harry pressed his hands over his ears and concentrated on breathing.

It was too much. He'd never made plans for winning, for everything changing.

His ears rang.

"You'll catch cold," Tom's voice came from behind him again, some time later. "Here." The man draped a robe over his shoulders, stopping to stand next to him. Head tipped back to examine the vast expanse of stars glittering above them.

"Cold?" Harry glanced at him. "I've never felt a day this warm in my life. Everything's so...light." He felt exposed by it, pinned beneath the constant sear of some huge spotlight.

"It takes a while to get used to," Tom said.

"And how long have you had to get used to it?"

"A little over fifty years. I've been...waiting for you."

Harry turned to look at him at that, mouth utterly dry with that statement. Tom had been waiting for him? "You don't look fifty."

Tom's lips twitched. "One of the perks of immortality."

"You're still immortal then? But you – your soul is pieced together."

"All but one." Tom stepped closer, gaze dipping over his lips. Harry wetted them instinctively as Tom's thumb traced over his cheek. "When you love someone, you give them a piece of your soul, don't you?"

"I'm pretty sure that's metaphorical," Harry whispered. Tom's touch didn't burn like the Monster's, nor freeze like the Beast's had. It seemed so normal.

And yet goosebumps rose on his skin.

"You said the same about giving me your heart." Tom's other hand settled on his hip, drawing him closer. "Tell me, do I still have it? Your heart?"

Harry surged up on his toes and crushed their lips together, fingers seeking a grip in Tom's hair.

Tom's breath caught muffled against Harry's mouth, head tilting to deepen the kiss as his thumb pressed against the hinge of Harry's jaw.

Harry's other hand curled around Tom's back, fisting into the fine material of his suit.

He pulled back breathless, lips kiss-slick and reddened.

Tom's pupils devoured his eyes as black as the Monster's had been, almost – a little glazed too. "That's a yes?"

"That's an I've done too much to let you go," Harry said. "For better or worse."

To his surprise, Tom's smile broadened. The man leaned in, kissing his neck before biting hard. Heat sparked down Harry's spine as he bit back a groan, clutching him tighter.

Tom soothed the flash of pain with his tongue.

"Then, I suppose," Tom said. "I should change my question."

"Yeah?" Harry studied him closely, half expecting to see the gleam of razor sharp teeth. It was ridiculous that the man could still half have the air of someone who could rip a person's lungs out in a heartbeat...though maybe Harry was biased, with knowledge of other lives.

Tom pressed a kiss to the scar on his forehead, before straightening.  
"Will you give me the opportunity to make you fall in love with me in turn?"

Harry shouldn't smile. He failed utterly at smothering a smile, but pretended to contemplate. "I feel like I should hire a couple of assassins or something, you know – just to make the odds more fair."

Tom laughed.

And this time, it wasn't in the voice of someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's done. I finished a story. Omg. Is this the real life or is this just fantasy? Hope you enjoyed it! If you did, I would love feedback as much as our Dark Lord loves Harry. Which is a ridiculous amount. Ahbdshb. I feel giddy. It is done! Although I did consider a sequel, but let's not even go there. I feel we are good and anything more would be kicking a dead horse. But yes, anyway. Thank you all for sticking with me through this confusing mess! Hopefully the ending was satisfying.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Petals Fallen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259416) by [Lydia_Theda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lydia_Theda/pseuds/Lydia_Theda)
  * [Cover for "Kisses Cursed by The_Fictionist"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6501403) by [PeggyStarkk (LupusUlulans)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LupusUlulans/pseuds/PeggyStarkk)




End file.
